Victoria stormed into the library of the Estate, slamming the heavy oak doors so hard the windows rattled. She was shaking–not with fear, but with a pure, white-hot rage that burned through the nausea.
William was sitting by the fire, reviewing a grant proposal. He looked up, alarmed by the violence of her entrance.
“Victoria?”
“She knows,” Victoria choked out, pacing the room. “The Vulture planted a spy. She has photos of my medication. She’s going to leak the pregnancy on Monday and paint me as unstable unless I resign.”
She stopped, looking at her husband. The fear of rejection–the fear that he would agree with the Board, that he would see her as a liability–clutched her throat.
“She wants me to quit, William. She wants to take the company.”
William stood up slowly. He set the grant proposal down on the table. He looked at his wife–the woman who had survived an avalanche, a memory wipe, and Alistair Croft. He saw the fire in her eyes, and he felt a familiar, electric charge surge through his own veins.
It was the feeling he had missed. The adrenaline. The call to battle.
He didn’t offer her a tissue. He didn’t tell her to step down. His eyes went cold, shifting from the gentle philanthropist back to the ruthless strategist who had once burned a company to the ground to save her.
“Resign?” William said, his voice dangerously low. “Absolutely not.”
He walked over to the desk and picked up the phone.
“She thinks she trapped you,” William said, looking at Victoria with a fierce, terrifying pride. “But she just made the last mistake of her career.”