Semua Bab My Brother’s Girlfriend Bullied Me, They Regretted It: Bab 1 - Bab 9

"Ma'am, you're holding up the line." Yvonne glanced at the customers waiting behind me, voice pitched loud on purpose. "Four hundred grand. Are you paying or not?"A few of them were openly staring now.I called Christopher.Busy signal. Again. And again.It was a weekday. What was he even doing?Chris had a temper, sure. He liked to play around. But there was one thing about him. He was scared of me. Whatever mess he got himself into, one call from me and he straightened right up. So the fact that I couldn't get through, something about it felt off.I put the phone away and looked her dead in the eye."My name is Eleanor Whitfield. Christopher is my brother. Pull up the investor file in the back office. Every store has my emergency contact on it."I figured that was the end of it.But the second she heard my name, the smug look on her face cracked apart, and then she burst out laughing. Loud, ugly, head-thrown-back laughing. Every eye in the store swung toward us.She leaned in sudden

My assistant got there faster than I expected. Less than twenty minutes later, the VIP fitting room door slammed open from the outside.She came in with two bodyguards. The second she saw me, face bloody, back marked black, the corner of my mouth still wet, she froze.I shook my head, just slightly. She got it instantly and swallowed whatever she'd been about to ask.I took the briefcase of cash from her and used the hand that still worked to drop it at Yvonne's feet.Yvonne bent down, picked it up, and opened it. The greed flashed across her face. Then she looked up, threatening: "If I find one fake bill in here, you don't make it to next week."She gestured at the two guards, and only then did they clear the door.I paused at the threshold and looked back. The cracked mirror, web-fractured. The pool of blood on the carpet. Still wet."Photograph it."My assistant swept the entire fitting room. The mirror, the blood, the guards' faces, the briefcase in Yvonne's hand. She didn't miss a

My assistant nodded and started making calls right there.Christopher stood watching her work, his face draining one shade at a time.A minute ago, he'd thought losing Yvonne was just losing face. Now he was starting to realize I hadn't come there just for Yvonne.The second the officers had Yvonne out the door, something snapped.He came around the chair and roared at me."Eleanor!"His eyes were red enough to bleed. "From the day Father left those shares to you, have you been planning how to throw me out of this family ever since?"The directors all looked down. No one stepped in.I let him keep yelling. Until his voice was wrecked. Until he couldn't catch a breath.I gave the two bodyguards a small nod. They walked over and removed Christopher from his board chair, putting him in the visitor's chair next to it.My assistant walked over at the same time and lifted the brass nameplate off the edge of the table. Director Christopher Whitfield.Christopher slumped in the visitor's chair

What came after was easier than I'd expected.Store surveillance, the hospital's certified medical assessment, the eight-hundred-thousand-dollar wire transfer, statements from customers in the store and from both security guards. The evidence was so airtight her own defense attorney didn't want to push back on it.She got five years.I heard at sentencing she was still on the stand crying out Christopher's name, begging him to come save her. What she didn't know was that the clip of her being cuffed and dragged out of that boardroom had been making the rounds since that afternoon, through every high-end fashion and finance circle in the city. Her name was already a punchline.Christopher had bigger problems.By that morning at headquarters, security was already waiting in the lobby. The second he walked in, the directors he used to drink with pretended not to recognize him.My father had the housekeeper pack everything he owned into a few cardboard boxes and dump them at the gate of th

I pulled every cent of Whitfield Group's investment out of the boutique chain that had been registered under Christopher's name.A handful of mid- and senior-level managers he'd promoted on that side of the business assumed they were going down with him. Instead, the family rolled their contracts straight over to my new label. Overnight, they jumped ship as a group.Six months later, the brand I'd registered under my own name, Eleanor Whitfield, opened twenty-six flagships across the country in a single push. Couture and ready-to-wear. Then Milan. Then Dubai.I made the cover of Forbes that year. The headline they ran on me was Heiress of the Year.Christopher's old line of business was wound down and shuttered within five months.Christopher's hundred grand went into a few small ventures. Every single one cratered. He'd grown up on unlimited black cards. He genuinely didn't know the difference between $2.60 coffee and $8 coffee.By the second month, he was behind on the utilities for