My ex-husband watched his mother dump a bucket of filthy ice water over his pregnant ex-wife at a family dinner—and laughed when she said, "At least you finally got a bath."

Up on the top floor of the Vanguard Tower, the sun poured through giant glass windows overlooking the Manhattan skyline.

I sat behind my massive mahogany desk, sipping a warm cup of herbal tea, while Arthur and a team of eight forensic accountants spread thick ledgers across the conference table.

"It’s worse than we thought, Cassidy," Arthur said, handing me a high-level summary report. "Brendan wasn't just incompetent; he was desperate."

"Desperate for what?" I asked, looking through the red line items.

"Sixteen months ago," Arthur explained, "Brendan invested twenty million dollars of Morrison Logistics’ operational capital into a high-risk cryptocurrency scheme run by a friend of Jessica’s brother. The entire scheme collapsed within ninety days. He lost every cent."

I leaned back, my hand resting on my stomach. "And to cover the hole before the annual Vanguard audit, he started falsifying invoices."

"Precisely," Arthur nodded. "He was funneling funds from the employee pension trust and vendor accounts to cover the missing thirty million dollars. If you hadn't executed Protocol 7 last night, the entire subsidiary would have gone insolvent by next month, throwing four thousand truck drivers and warehouse workers out of their jobs."

A cold rage washed over me.

I didn't care about the money spent on Diane's facelift or Jessica's bags. But four thousand innocent working-class families—the people who actually built the company—were almost ruined because Brendan wanted to play the big-shot billionaire in front of his mistress.

"Did he sign the pension transfers personally?" I asked.

"Every single one," Arthur confirmed. "His signature is on forty-two fraudulent wire authorisations."

"Take the findings directly to the United States Attorney’s Office," I directed calmly. "I want full criminal charges filed by the end of the week. No plea bargains. No leniency."

"And the pension fund?" Arthur asked.

"Transfer fifty million dollars from my personal Vanguard cash reserve into the employee pension fund immediately," I ordered without hesitation. "No worker will lose a single penny because of my ex-husband's greed."

Arthur smiled warmly, his admiration clear. "Right away, Boss."

At that moment, my phone on the desk chimed with an incoming video call. The screen displayed the name: Jonathan Vance (Grandfather).

I picked up the secure satellite tablet and pressed accept.

The image of a stern, distinguished gentleman in his seventies with sharp blue eyes and a thick mane of silver hair appeared on the screen, sitting in his library in London.

"Cassidy, my dear," Lord Jonathan Vance said, his rich voice echoing from the speakers. "I just saw the Bloomberg alerts. Did you finally burn those parasites to the ground?"

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