Amelia now held the Lockhart ledger, a physical testament to Silas’s fraudulent past. But publishing it directly, especially with an anonymous source, was still fraught with peril. She knew Silas would unleash his full legal arsenal.
She needed to create a broader current of suspicion, to make the city itself question him.
She began to discreetly leak snippets of the ledger’s contents. Not to her own newspaper, which was still under Silas’s thumb, but to several rival publications. She used her contacts, journalists who were hungry for a scandal, especially one involving a titan like Lockhart.
She framed it not as a direct accusation, but as “questions arising from historical records,” “unconfirmed reports of foundational irregularities.”
Soon, subtle but pointed articles began to appear in various papers. One headline read: “Lockhart’s Empire: Built on Sand or Steel?” Another hinted at “shadowy dealings in the early days of industrial giants.”
The stories didn’t name Eleanor, or Arthur, or even the charity ball. They focused solely on Silas’s business ethics.
The city, which had been so quick to dismiss Eleanor as vindictive, now found itself facing a barrage of uncomfortable questions about its celebrated industrialist. The whispers, which Silas had so carefully controlled, became murmurs of genuine suspicion, an undercurrent that even his immense power could not silence.
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