All Chapters of The True Heiress, His Worst Nightmare: Chapter 161 - Chapter 170

Jason stepped out of his car and adjusted the cuff of his suit before making his way toward the towering commercial building where he had an important business meeting. The glass structure reflected the bustling city around it, with luxury vehicles pulling in and out of the entrance as executives hurried through the revolving doors.His assistant followed a few steps behind, carrying a leather folder containing the day's meeting agenda.Jason had almost reached the entrance when movement several meters away caught his attention.Three people were walking out of the building through another exit.One of them was Lauren.She wore a fitted cream-colored business suit, her posture poised and her expression composed as she exchanged a few final words with the two men accompanying her. Both men were dressed in black suits with matching ties, their polished appearance immediately revealing they were high-ranking corporate executives.Jason slowed his pace.His eyes narrowed slightly.Somet

The Ecofel boardroom smelled of old leather and older money. Lauren stood at the frosted glass doors for a moment before pushing them open, smoothing the front of her blazer with a steadiness she did not entirely feel but had long since mastered projecting.The room went quiet the second she stepped inside.Twelve faces turned toward her, some carefully blank, others openly unreadable in the way that meant they were working very hard not to react. The long mahogany table stretched before her like a battlefield disguised as furniture, name placards lined up with military precision. And there, near the head of it, sat her new placard: Lauren — Shareholder Representative.She let her eyes sweep the room slowly, deliberately, before she spoke."Good morning, everyone," Lauren said, her voice warm and even, betraying nothing of the satisfaction humming quietly beneath her ribs. She took her seat without waiting to be shown to it.A brittle silence answered her.Then Marcus Webb, silver

Three days after Curtis had thrown him out of the office, Jason was sitting in a cramped rental car across the street from a records office in Wilmington, Delaware, watching the rain streak down his windshield and wondering how his life had turned into this.He hadn't slept much. He hadn't wanted to. Every hour felt like it mattered now, like the ground under Curtis's feet was shifting a little more each day nobody paid attention.The trail had started simple enough — Lauren's name on the shareholder filing, the twelve percent stake she'd used to claim her board seat. Jason had assumed, like everyone else, that the money behind it was hers. Old family wealth, maybe, or some quiet fortune she'd built in the years she'd been gone. It would have made sense. It would have been clean.It wasn't clean.He'd pulled the filing apart layer by layer, the way Marissa had taught him, tracing the shares back through a holding company registered in the Caymans, which led to a trust in Luxembourg

Tessa's office light was still on when Curtis pulled into the parking garage, which didn't surprise him. She'd been working later than usual for weeks now, ever since the board meeting, ever since whatever quiet investigation she'd launched had started eating up her evenings. He rode the elevator up in silence, rehearsing words that fell apart the moment he tried to arrange them into something coherent.He knocked once and let himself in before she could answer.Tessa looked up from her desk, surprise flickering across her face before it hardened into something more guarded. "Curtis. It's late.""I know." He stood in the doorway for a moment, hands in his pockets, feeling more exposed than he had in years. "I need to talk to you. And I need you to actually listen, because I'm not going to try to explain my way out of this."Something in his voice made her set down her pen. "Sit down."He didn't sit. He needed to say this standing, the way a man says things he can't take back. "You w

Jason hadn't left his apartment in two days. Takeout containers stacked up on the counter, the blinds stayed shut, and the corkboard on his wall had grown so dense with printouts and red string that it looked less like an investigation and more like the inside of his own exhausted mind.The redacted name had taken him nearly three weeks to crack, and he'd only managed it because Marissa found a filing clerk in Luxembourg willing to talk, off the record, for a number Jason didn't want to think too hard about. The clerk hadn't given them the name directly. She'd given them a court reference number instead, buried in an old civil case connected to the trust behind Lauren's shares. That reference number led to a docket. The docket led to a settlement filed under seal fourteen years earlier.And the settlement led him to a name Jason recognized immediately, because it had once meant something in circles he used to run in.Desmond Kade.Jason sat back slowly in his chair when he saw it,