Alle Kapitel von BURNED EMPIRE : Kapitel 41 – Kapitel 50

Camilla’s Pov The conference room on the top floor smelled like fresh coffee and expensive cologne, the same smell every boardroom in this city seemed to share no matter who occupied it, no matter how much power had changed hands inside its walls. Lisa sat to my left, a folder of documents squared perfectly in front of her, her posture straight and professional despite the exhaustion I knew she was hiding underneath it. Across the table sat three of Baldore Enterprises' remaining board members, along with two lawyers representing what was left of the company's legal team.The transfer documents sat in the center of the table, waiting for my signature to finalize what months of maneuvering had built toward. Once I signed, the last of Baldore Enterprises' assets folded fully under J and F Corporation's control. No loopholes left. No clause Darian or his mother could exploit to claw any of it back, no matter how many lawyers they threw at it afterward.I picked up the pen."Before you

Camilla’s pov I couldn't sleep that night, even with George beside me again, I had managed to convince him to go to sleep after we both couldn’t figure out where the leak came from, Lisa had left a few hours back . My mind kept circling back to the list of five names. Me. George. Lisa. Two guards George had already questioned and cleared, at least for now, at least based on his reading of their faces.That left Lisa, and the thought of it made my chest ache in a way I didn't want to examine too closely, a physical pain that felt almost like grief already, grief for a friendship I hadn't lost yet but feared losing.I got up quietly, careful not to wake George, and went downstairs to the kitchen with my laptop, pulling up the security logs Lisa had mentioned on our drive back into the city. I wasn't looking to prove her guilty. I told myself that over and over as I scrolled through the access records, the kitchen dark except for the glow of the screen. I was looking to prove her inn

Darian’s pov I found out about Corwin and Elias Trent the same way the rest of the city did, through a phone call from a board member who couldn't keep the panic out of his voice."Your mother's man just got walked out of the building in front of everyone," he said. "Public. Humiliating. She's going to lose the last of her allies on that board if this gets any louder."I hung up without saying much, because there wasn't much to say. I already knew it was coming, in some distant way, I just hadn't expected it to unravel this fast, this cleanly, like Camila had been three steps ahead of my mother the entire time and simply let her walk into the trap before pulling it shut.My mother was in her study when I got there, standing at the window with her back to the door, a glass of something amber in her hand, untouched."You knew," she said, without turning around. "You knew and you did nothing to stop it.""I told you not to do it in the first place," I said. "You didn't listen.""I list

George’s pov I read the article three times before I could fully process the damage it had already done, the words blurring together and sharpening again, each pass making my stomach drop further. Alessia hadn't been sloppy about it. She'd been surgical, feeding a reporter just enough truth to make it credible and just enough spin to paint Camila as a manipulative gold digger who'd clawed her way into J and F Corporation using a stolen child as leverage.Three weeks of silence, and this was what she'd been building the entire time. I should have known better. I should have trusted my own instincts instead of letting myself believe, even for a few peaceful weeks, that a woman like Alessia Baldore ever truly went quiet without a reason.FROM PRISON TO PENTHOUSE: The Hidden Past of J&F's New CEO” the headline read, and beneath it, in smaller print, Sources close to the Baldore family reveal shocking ties between Camila Gomez, her daughter, and disgraced heir Darian Baldore.I forced my

Darian’s povI hadn't meant for it to go public. That was the truth, even if nobody would believe me once the clip started circulating. I'd agreed to sit down with a journalist I trusted, someone who'd covered our family for years without ever twisting a story too far from the truth, intending to finally, quietly, put on the record everything my mother had done. Aurora. The confession she'd forced Camila into. All of it, laid out plainly, my own small attempt at correcting seven years of silence.I remembered sitting across from the journalist, a woman named Elaine Voss who'd covered three separate scandals involving my family over the years without ever once sensationalizing them beyond what the facts actually supported, and feeling, for the first time in longer than I could remember, like I was finally doing something right instead of something that only benefited myself. I'd told her everything. The confession. The murder. My mother's confession to me directly, word for word as clo