Chapter 8 - THE SHREDDING OF THE GOLD
Richard reached into his jacket, pulled out a small, leather-bound notebook, and tossed it onto the table beside the letters.
"For three years, I have quietly audited every transaction the Hale Family Foundation executed with our firm," Richard said, his tone cold and clinical. "Victoria didn't just hide Emma’s letters, Ethan. She used her position on our advisory board to divert three million dollars from your private charitable trust into her family's offshore holding accounts to cover her brother's failed real estate ventures in Dubai."
Victoria let out a strangled, breathless sob, burying her face in her hands as the final pillar of her defense collapsed.
Ethan didn't look at the financial notebook. He didn't care about the three million dollars.
He looked at Victoria—the woman he was set to marry in two months, the woman who had stood beside him at charity galas, who had held his arm while he mourned the loss of the woman he thought had abandoned him.
Slowly, deliberately, Ethan reached down to his own left hand.
He unclasped the bespoke platinum engagement ring band that matched the diamond ring on Victoria’s finger—a family heirloom that had belonged to his late mother. He slipped the platinum band off his finger.
He dropped it onto the center of the mahogany table, right beside the matte-black payment card and the bundle of unopened letters.
The platinum ring bounced once on the wood, making a small, sharp chime before settling into silence.
"Get out," Ethan said.
His voice was not loud. It carried no theatrical rage. It was a flat, absolute sentence of banishment.
Victoria looked at the platinum ring sitting on the table, then looked up into Ethan’s dead, unforgiving eyes. She knew there was no negotiation left. No lawyer, no family connection, and no financial merger could fix the abyss that had opened beneath her feet.
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Without another word, clutching her champagne-gold silk dress to keep from tripping, Victoria Hale turned and ran down the carpeted aisle of Le Ciel, her heels clicking frantically until the double heavy doors slammed shut behind her.
The main dining room fell into complete, utter silence.
