The roar of whispers surged through the ballroom, drowning out the faint sounds of the city outside. Sabrina Holloway, stripped of her empire with a few cold words, collapsed to her knees, her sapphire gown pooling around her. Her face crumpled, mascara streaking her pale cheeks as raw, guttural sobs tore through her.
Julian, still rigid beside her, made no move to help. His eyes darted nervously between Cross, the Aegis enforcers, and the stunned crowd.
Sabrina lifted her tear-streaked face to me, her eyes wild with despair. “I didn’t want to do it! Helena, I swear!” Her voice was hoarse, ragged.
The sound of her genuine distress, so different from her usual icy composure, silenced the room once more. Every executive, every socialite, every journalist leaned forward, sensing a deeper, uglier truth about to be laid bare.
“I never wanted to launch that campaign!” she cried, her voice cracking. “I never wanted to call you a parasite! You have to believe me!”
My own triumph, just moments ago, felt like ash in my mouth. This wasn’t the arrogant, calculated Sabrina I knew. This was a woman utterly broken, a facade shattered.
“I was being blackmailed!” she screamed, pointing a trembling finger at the still-motionless Julian. “He threatened me! He said if I didn’t ruin you, if I didn’t push you out of the family legacy, he would kill me!”
A collective gasp went through the ballroom. Julian flinched, his jaw clenching.
“He sent me death threats!” Sabrina wailed, fumbling inside her clutch bag with shaking hands. She pulled out her phone, frantically swiping. “He sent me recordings! Explicit recordings! Of me, of… things that would destroy my career forever.”
Her words spilled out, a torrent of terror and desperation. “He said he would leak them all. He said he would make sure I never worked in this town again, that I’d lose everything!”
She thrust the phone forward, displaying a series of encrypted messages. The screen glowed with sinister texts, threatening anonymous accounts, and chillingly specific details of her private life. The messages, though from an unknown number, clearly referenced intimate details only a close confidant would know.
Cross merely watched, his expression unchanged. The enforcers remained still, like statues of doom. Julian, however, had begun to sweat, a single bead tracing a path down his temple.
“He told me to make sure you didn’t look into the studio accounts, Helena!” Sabrina sobbed, her voice barely audible now. “He told me to create such a scandal, such a public distraction, that you’d be too busy defending yourself to ever ask questions about the money!”
The pieces clicked into place with horrifying clarity. The $14 million in syndicate funds. The payments to Aegis. My husband trying to keep it all buried. And now, Julian, pushing Sabrina to publicly smear me, to ensure I remained distracted, unable to uncover the real crime.
Sabrina was a pawn. A terrified, desperate puppet in a much darker game. My victory over her felt hollow, replaced by a cold dread as I stared at Julian. The true villain was finally stepping into the light.
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