CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

The next morning, Bianca arrived at the Davenport conference room before dawn. She sat, her eyes fixed on logistics files she now knew were meaningless. Her body still felt drained from the adrenaline crash the night before.The door opened, and Enzo walked in, already dressed in a fresh suit. He didn't look at her with pity or ask how she was feeling.Without a word, Enzo placed a fresh mug beside her right hand. Black, two sugars, and a drop of almond milk. Exactly how she drank it."Coffee," he said simply.Bianca looked up, her fingers wrapping around the warm mug as the heat seeped into her hands. For the first time since the gala, the knot in her stomach eased. Enzo wasn't treating her differently. He was simply there."Thank you," she said quietly.Enzo gave a small nod and took the seat beside her.The door opened, and Matteo walked in carrying a heavy box. Without a word, he crossed to the glass investigation board and started taking down the files: the Red Hook manifests, th

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

The conference table was bare. Matteo stood before the board with a gray cloth in one hand and a bottle of solvent in the other. Using slow, steady strokes, he wiped away the web of black marker that had mapped their investigation for the past month.The Red Hook manifests blurred into gray before disappearing. The Swiss routing paths vanished under the solvent. The Master Tier network logs disappeared in a single slow sweep.Bianca sat at the end of the table, her fingers wrapped tightly around a glass of cold water as she watched their entire case disappear from the glass wall."A month of work," Bianca said quietly. "Every lead and every discrepancy. He didn't just leak it to us, Matteo. He built the whole trail.""He built a playground for us," Matteo muttered, tossing the damp cloth into a plastic bin. He uncapped a thick black marker and turned back to the clean glass. He shook his head. "It was too perfect."Bianca stared at the clean glass. It looked exactly how she felt. Empt

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Gabriel Cross didn't take sides. In Manhattan's financial world, his investigations had ended careers, exposed corruption, and rattled boardrooms for years. Once he started digging, he rarely stopped until he found the truth. By mid-morning, an interview request from Gabriel Cross was waiting on Bianca's desk. Bianca stared at the email, her finger hovering over the screen."If I talk to him," she said quietly, "Lawrence will accuse me of leaking company information to manipulate the press.""And if you don't talk to him, he writes the story anyway," Matteo noted from across the room."Let him write it," Bianca said softly, hitting the decline button. By four that afternoon, the digital edition of the New York Ledger was updated, and the story hit Barley Group like a sledgehammer. It was devastating because it was fair. Cross didn't take sides. He exposed them both.He questioned Lawrence's quiet management changes, then turned the same scrutiny on Bianca, asking why the Davenport t

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

Following people demanded a different kind of investigation. Server logs were predictable, but characters weren't.By mid-morning on Thursday, Camille Barley had already shown how much she was risking. The short message she sent to Bianca's private phone came from an executive restroom inside Barley Headquarters, a reckless move that confirmed she was now working as Bianca's inside source.Just as Camille predicted, Lawrence dismissed his driver shortly before two o'clock. Instead of leaving through the main lobby, where his armored town car usually waited, he slipped out through the service entrance. When he stepped onto the sidewalk, he wore a plain gray coat and carried nothing, looking more like an office worker than the chairman of a billion-dollar empire.Bianca's new strategy began the moment he left the building. They weren't following documents anymore. They were following him."Target's moving," Matteo's voice crackled through her earpiece from two blocks away. "He's getting

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

At first, the shift was almost impossible to notice.Within days of the surveillance photograph being taken, the fight moved out of the boardroom. No newspaper published a story and no lawsuit was filed. Instead, the whispers began.The rumor was simple.Bianca and Enzo Davenport had been lovers long before her divorce from Dominic. It was just believable enough to spread on its own. Within days, it had taken on a life of its own, growing stronger with every retelling despite the complete lack of evidence.The campaign began with Lawrence.He had already realized that fabricated evidence would no longer stop Bianca, and that Enzo had become far more invested. If he wanted to break her, he had to break the trust surrounding her.Lawrence stayed well out of sight while Selena handled the rest.Driven by ambition and convinced Lawrence was her path to power, she quietly spread the rumor through executive circles, charity boards, and among major shareholders. At private lunches and charit

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

The last time Bianca and Dominic had sat across from each other in silence, they had still been husband and wife. This time, they were just two people saying goodbye.The end of a marriage doesn't always come with signed divorce papers; sometimes, it comes when the silence between two people no longer feels heavy.After his confrontation on the executive floor, Dominic reached out through Olivia and asked Bianca for one final private meeting. He chose a quiet boardroom in a Midtown hotel, away from both Brown Holdings and Davenport headquarters, and made one thing clear from the beginning: he wasn't there to beg, manipulate, or ask her to come back.When Bianca walked into the room, Dominic was standing by the window, staring out at the skyline. He looked tired, and the hard edge he usually carried was gone."Thank you for coming," Dominic said, turning to face her. He didn't offer a polite smile or step forward into her space. He kept his distance, his posture grounded in a quiet, r

Too Late To Want Me Back のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 31 - チャプター 36

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX