Chapter 4 - The War Cabinet
The world seemed to tilt on its axis.
I stared at Sebastian, my mouth slightly open, my brain struggling to process the sheer horror of his words. A fake grave. A fake death certificate. Audio deepfakes.
Arthur Vale hadn't just separated us—he had constructed two parallel, terrifying lies to keep us isolated from each other forever.
"He... he made you think I was dead?" I whispered, my knees trembling so violently I had to sit back down on the bed.
"Every year on November 12th," Sebastian said, his voice cracking, "I sat by that grave in Scarsdale with a bottle of Scotch and a handgun, trying to summon the courage to join you."
He stepped closer, sinking back down to his knees right in front of me. He reached out, his large, calloused hands resting hesitatingly on my knees. I didn't pull away this time. I was too stunned to move.
"When I saw you across Central Park today," Sebastian breathed, looking up into my eyes with a desperate, agonizing hope, "I thought I was having a psychotic break. I thought my mind had finally snapped."
"Sebastian..." My voice was barely a breath. The anger that had sustained me for four hard, grueling years began to fracture, revealing the deep, bleeding wound underneath. "He told me you laughed when he handed you the ring I left on the counter."
"I never saw that ring," Sebastian whispered. "I kept your coat, Maya. The green one with the missing button. It's still hanging in the closet of my private office at Vale Tower. I haven't let anyone touch it in four years."
A soft whimper escaped my mouth. I reached out, my trembling fingers hovering over his jawline, feeling the rough stubble of his skin. The scent of him—cedarwood, expensive tobacco, and rain—flooded my senses, dragging back memories of late nights in our tiny Soho loft when we were twenty-two and believed love was enough to conquer the world.
Suddenly, the penthouse intercom chimed sharply, shattering the moment.
"Mr. Vale," Marcus’s voice echoed through the speaker in the wall. "We have a situation. Arthur Vale’s legal team just filed an emergency motion with the Supreme Court of New York. They are claiming you are mentally unfit to execute your duties as CEO, citing your sudden cancellation of the Hart merger."
Sebastian’s posture instantly shifted. The grieving husband vanished, replaced in a fraction of a second by the cold, calculating billionaire whose ruthless tactics were feared across four continents.
He stood up smoothly, wiping the tears from his face with the back of his hand.
"Stay here with the children, Maya," Sebastian said, his voice as hard as cold steel. "The apartment is locked down. The windows are bulletproof, and there are twelve armed men in the hallway. No one enters without my thumbprint."
"Where are you going?" I asked, a sudden surge of fear rushing through me—not for myself, but for him.
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Sebastian looked back at me from the doorway, his gray eyes flashing with a dark, terrifying light.
"I'm going to take my family's company apart, piece by piece," he said. "And then I'm going to put my grandfather in a cell where he will spend the rest of his miserable life."
