Chapter 31 - Adrian’s Desperation
|
The devastating fallout from the press conference was incredibly swift and absolutely merciless. By weaponizing the truth without ever explicitly naming him, I had completely triggered a massive internal audit within his new father-in-law’s corporate empire. Two days later, my phone buzzed incessantly with frantic, unhinged text messages from Adrian’s personal number. I hadn’t heard his actual voice in years, and I had absolutely no intention of starting now.
I sat in my quiet, sunlit office, watching the toxic messages pile up on the glowing screen.
You ruined me.
He froze all my accounts. She left me.
Answer the phone, you owe me an explanation.
"Are you actually going to read all of those?" Marisol asked, stepping into my office and eyeing the buzzing phone with deep disgust.
"I'm not reading them to understand him," I replied, calmly taking a slow sip of my herbal tea. "I am simply collecting heavily documented evidence of his escalating harassment just in case we need a permanent restraining order."
"He is completely desperate," Marisol observed, sitting in the chair opposite my desk. "A desperate man who has just lost his entire supply of unearned money is a highly dangerous variable."
"He isn't dangerous anymore, Marisol," I corrected her, sliding the phone into a soundproof desk drawer and locking it. "He was only dangerous when I actually believed I needed his approval to survive. Without his money, and without my fear, he is just a deeply pathetic man screaming into an absolute void."
"Dorian said the father-in-law is actively pressing criminal charges for the wire fraud," she added with a thoroughly satisfied smile.
May you like
"Good," I said, opening a new victim file on my desk, instantly redirecting my focus to the work that actually mattered. "That is a legal problem for his defense attorneys to heavily manage. My absolute only concern is ensuring that the woman in this file gets her stolen identity back by Friday. Adrian is officially relegated to my past. We have a future to aggressively build."
And just like that, the terrifying ghost that had haunted my entire adult life was finally, permanently exorcised.
