"You can't be serious, Ester! You're actually walking back into that house with that man?" Dominic's voice roared through the foyer, his composure finally shattering.
Richard Blackwood didn't flinch. He stood there, leaning slightly on his umbrella, watching the two of them with the detached interest of a scientist observing a chemical reaction. "The lady has made her choice, Dominic. She understands the weight of legacy. Something you, with your new-money empire, seem to have forgotten."
Ester turned to Dominic, her hands trembling as she grabbed his forearms. She could feel the heat radiating from him, the sheer force of his protective rage. "Dominic, look at me. Look at my eyes."
Dominic looked. His breathing was heavy, his blue eyes clouded with a mix of fear and betrayal. "I won't let you do this. I'll find the files. I'll hack his servers. Give me three hours."
"In three hours, he'll have ruined my father's name forever," Ester whispered, her voice cracking. "I can't let that happen. Not when I'm finally in a position to fix everything. Trust me. Please."
Dominic leaned his forehead against hers for a fleeting second, ignoring Richard's presence. "If he touches you... if even a single hair on your head is harmed, I will level every building with the Blackwood name on it. Do you hear me?"
"I hear you," Ester murmured.
Richard cleared his throat, checking his gold pocket watch. "As touching as this farewell is, the sun will be up in two hours. We have a lot of work to do if we're going to save the Emerald City—and your father's reputation, Ester."
Ester pulled away from Dominic, her face hardening into a mask of cold determination. She walked toward the front door without looking back. "I'm ready, Richard. Let's go."
The ride in the silver Bentley was suffocating. The air was thick with the scent of expensive leather and Richard's cologne, which smelled like old paper and dried flowers. Richard sat across from her, his eyes unreadable.
"You're much more like your father than I thought," Richard remarked as the car glided through the rain-slicked streets. "He was stubborn too. He thought the truth was a shield. He didn't realize that in this world, the truth is just something people use to sharpen their knives."
"Don't talk about my father," Ester said, staring out the window. "You don't get to say his name."
"Fair enough," Richard conceded with a light shrug. "But let's talk about your husband. Xavier is... fragile right now. He thinks he's lost everything. When we walk in there, I want you to play the part. Tell him you realized you couldn't live without the Blackwood status. Tell him you were scared. Let him feel powerful again."
Ester turned her head slowly, her gaze icy. "You want me to stroke his ego so he doesn't realize I'm the one holding the knife?"
"Exactly," Richard smiled. "He needs to believe you're back under his thumb. That way, he'll give you the master access codes to the off-shore accounts. He won't give them to me—he's too paranoid. But he'll give them to his 'loving' wife if she cries a few tears and asks for forgiveness."
"And the deal? I hand him the handcuffs?"
"Once the money is moved and the safety permits are legalized under a new corporate shell, you can do whatever you want with him," Richard said dismissively. "He's served his purpose. A son who can't hold his own wife isn't much of a son at all."
The car pulled into the driveway of the Blackwood mansion. It looked different now—darker, more ominous. To Ester, it no longer looked like a home; it looked like a mausoleum for her five years of wasted life.
They entered the foyer. The house was a mess. A vase lay shattered near the door, and the smell of spilled whiskey hung in the air. Xavier was slumped on the sofa in the living room, his shirt unbuttoned, his eyes bloodshot and frantic.
He jumped to his feet when he saw Ester, nearly tripping over an empty bottle. "Ester? You... you came back?"
Ester looked at Richard, who gave her a subtle nod. She took a breath, forcing her shoulders to slump, making her eyes look wide and fearful. She stepped toward Xavier, her voice trembling—half with act, half with genuine disgust.
"Xavier... Richard told me... he told me about the files. He told me what would happen if I stayed with Dominic."
Xavier's expression shifted instantly. The panic vanished, replaced by a slow, sickening smirk of triumph. He walked over to her, grabbing her by the shoulders. His grip was too tight, his breath smelling of cheap scotch. "I knew it. I knew you'd come crawling back. You thought Dominic Sterling could protect you? He's nothing. You belong here, with me."
"I was so scared, Xavier," Ester whimpered, looking down at her feet. "I didn't know what to do. Dominic... he was so controlling. He wouldn't let me leave."
"That bastard," Xavier hissed, pulling her into a rough embrace. "I'll kill him. I'll destroy his company for touching what's mine."
Over Xavier's shoulder, Ester saw Richard standing by the fireplace, watching them with an expression of cold satisfaction. He gestured toward the stairs, indicating she should get to work.
"Xavier, honey," Ester said, pulling back just enough to look at him. "Richard said we need to fix the files. The Emerald City... it's our future, right? I want to help. I want to make sure no one can ever take us down."
Xavier's eyes glazed over with greed. "Yeah. Yeah, the project. We need to move the funds before the morning audit. But the system is locked, Ester. The IT guys said there's a kill-switch."
"I can fix it," Ester said softly. "But I need the master encryption key from your private drive. The one you keep in the safe."
Xavier hesitated for a second, his eyes narrowing. "Why do you need the master key? You never needed it before."
"Because the kill-switch I built is tied to the company's capital flow," Ester lied smoothly, her heart racing. "If I don't use the master key to bypass the audit, the files will be permanently deleted the moment I try to unlock them. We'll lose everything, Xavier. The fifty million, the contracts... everything."
Xavier looked at his father. Richard nodded slowly. "She's right, son. We can't risk the deletion. Give her the key."
Xavier grunted, staggering toward his office. "Fine. But I'm watching you. Don't think you're going to pull anything."
They entered the office. Xavier fumbled with the safe, eventually pulling out a small, encrypted black USB drive. He plugged it into the main computer and typed in a long string of characters.
"There," Xavier said, gesturing to the screen. "The system is open. Fix it."
Ester sat down at the desk. Her fingers flew across the keyboard. To Xavier and Richard, it looked like she was debugging code. In reality, she was opening a secure, high-speed bridge directly into Dominic Sterling's private server.
"I'm in," she messaged through a hidden chat window.
"Downloading now," came Dominic's instant reply. "Hold them for five minutes, Ester. Just five minutes."
"How's it going?" Richard asked, walking over to stand behind her. "Is the kill-switch disabled?"
"Almost," Ester said, her voice steady. "I'm just rerouting the data packets so the commission doesn't see the change in steel suppliers. It's a lot of data to move."
Xavier paced behind her, his agitation growing. "Hurry up. I want this done. I want to celebrate. I'm going to call Chloe and tell her she's out. I don't need her anymore now that you're back."
Ester felt a pang of pity for Chloe, but she pushed it down. "Done," she said, hitting the 'Enter' key with a flourish.
The screen flashed green. A progress bar began to fill. 100% Transfer Complete.
"Is that it?" Xavier asked, leaning over her shoulder. "Is the money safe?"
Ester stood up, turning to face both of them. The act was over. The slumped shoulders vanished, replaced by a spine of steel. She tucked her hair behind her ear and looked Xavier straight in the eye.
"The money is very safe, Xavier," Ester said, her voice dripping with venom. "It's currently being frozen by the International Anti-Money Laundering Task Force. Along with every other asset tied to this office."
Xavier froze. "What? What did you just say?"
Richard stepped forward, his eyes widening as he looked at the screen. "Ester, what did you do?"
"I didn't fix the project, Richard," Ester said, stepping back toward the door. "I just gave Dominic Sterling the 'Black Ledger' with your master encryption signature on it. It's not just Chloe's word anymore. It's a digital confession signed by both of you."
Xavier let out a roar of rage and lunged for her, but Ester was faster. She stepped out of the office and slammed the heavy oak door, locking it from the outside just as his body slammed against it.
"Open the door! Ester! I'll kill you!" Xavier screamed, pounding on the wood.
Ester stood in the hallway, her chest heaving. She looked at the door, then at the front entrance of the house. The sound of sirens began to wail in the distance—faint at first, but getting closer.
Suddenly, her phone buzzed. It was a text from an unknown number.
Ester opened it. Her heart stopped.
"You think you won, Ester? Look at the safe again. The one behind the painting."
Ester turned back to the office door, then her eyes darted to the wall in the hallway. There was a small, hidden safe behind a landscape painting she had never noticed before.
She walked over to it. The door was slightly ajar, as if someone had left it that way on purpose. Inside, there was a single manila envelope with her father's name on it.
She opened it. Inside wasn't evidence of his crimes. It was a series of letters, letters from her father to a man named 'D'.
Ester's breath hitched as she read the first line: "If you're reading this, Dominic, then I'm already gone. Please, protect my daughter from the Blackwoods. They don't just want her talent ... they know who her mother really is."
Ester's head spun. She looked at the office door where Richard was now strangely silent.
"Richard!" Ester shouted through the door. "Who was my mother? Why did my father write to Dominic ten years ago?"
From inside the room, Richard's voice came back, calm, cold, and terrifyingly amused.
"Oh, Ester ... you really think Dominic Sterling found you by accident seven years ago? Ask him about the 'Sterling-Wijaya' merger of 1995. Ask him why his father had to die to keep your mother's inheritance a secret."