Chapter 8: You Know Nothing About That Money

Leah's POV

"Elias?"

It took me a moment to register who was standing in the doorway. My vision was still swimming, and the room refused to hold still. "What are you doing here?"

He was already walking toward me, that smug, predatory smile stretched across his face, and the moment his cologne hit me, my stomach lurched violently.

I gagged. Before I could recover, Elias reached out to steady me, his hand closing around my arm. "Leah," he said, his voice dropping into something low and self-satisfied, "you're beautiful when you're drunk."

"Get your hands off me."

I wrenched free with everything I had left, fury cutting through the haze. "Who let you in? Get out of my house!"

The warmth drained from his expression instantly, replaced by something cold and flat — but he didn't move. "Leah, stop making a scene. I'm your fiancé."

"Stay away from me." I shoved him back again and turned to Kyle, reaching for the one person I still believed would choose me. "Dad — make him leave. Get him out of here."

But the man I'd been laughing with over dinner twenty minutes ago was gone. What remained in his place wore a face I didn't recognize — avoidant, ashamed, utterly still.

He didn't stop Elias. He didn't move at all. He only said, quietly, "Be a good girl, Leah. Don't blame your father."

And just like that, I understood.

This dinner had never been an apology. It had been a setup — Kyle had crossed the line and planted himself squarely on the same side as Lyra and Mia, and the objective was to hand me back to Elias. The reason I, a woman who could hold her liquor without effort, had gone under after only a few glasses was suddenly, sickeningly obvious. Everything had been arranged in advance.

"Dad." I gripped the arm of the sofa to keep myself upright, my eyes fixed on him. "Why are you helping him? Did he threaten you? Does he have something on you?"

That was the last hope I was holding onto — that there was some threat so enormous he'd had no other choice.

Kyle's complexion was ashen, but he shook his head. "No one threatened me. Don't ask anymore."

"I'm asking you why." The words tore out of me, raw and uncontrolled, and the tears came without permission. "Look me in the eyes and tell me why. Why would you do this to me?"

Under the force of it, he finally broke. "It's the money," he said, his voice crumbling. "It's the money. The investment — Elias was the one who put it in. He said if we didn't cooperate, he'd pull it back, and he'd sell Mia off overseas. I couldn't — the company, Mia — I couldn't give up either one."

"So you gave up me instead. For eight hundred thousand."

Three minutes ago, I had been on the verge of telling him the truth — that Matto had promised to inject two million into the family company as an investment once our wedding was finalized. Three minutes ago, I was about to give him a way out of all of this. And he had thrown me away before I could say a single word.

He could have come to me. He could have told me what was happening and asked me what to do. Instead he had traded me in silence, without a second thought, for a company and a stepdaughter who shared none of his blood.

"I'm sorry." Kyle sank to his knees on the floor, folding in on himself. "I had no choice. It's not as simple as you're making it sound. Besides, Elias said — he said you two were practically married soon. That he didn't hold any of it against you."

"Shut up." I pressed my hand to my chest. "I don't want to hear it."

Nothing he said would change the fact that I was the one who could be sacrificed. The investment that had kept the company breathing — that had been mine. I was the one who'd put that money in. And Elias had stolen the credit for it, then turned around and used it as leverage to blackmail my own father. The audacity of it made my head spin.

But it also made one thing perfectly clear: whatever I had believed existed between Kyle and me had never been strong enough to survive the moment Mia and money entered the equation.

I was his biological daughter. His blood. And it hadn't mattered at all.

A sharp, metallic taste rose in my throat. I felt the injustice of it like a physical thing.

"Leah." Kyle pushed the front door open wide, standing aside. "Go with Elias. He brought people with him. There's nowhere for you to run."

My legs gave out. I slid down the side of the sofa and hit the floor, and every attempt to push myself back up failed. I had nothing left to fight with.

Elias looked down at me with the expression of a man collecting what was already his. "Leah, just be a good girl. I don't mind that you married another man — but you need to know that I love you. I only made the same mistake every man in the world makes eventually."

His hand reached for me.

The door exploded inward.

A team of men in tactical gear poured through the entrance with the kind of coordinated precision that left no room for reaction. Within seconds, Elias and every one of the men he'd brought with him were face-down and pinned, and the room had been completely locked down before any of them had the chance to process what was happening.

Elias, cheek pressed to the floor, was cursing through his teeth. "You'd better ease up — you hear me? You add to my injuries, and I will make every last one of you pay for it."

One of the men crouched beside me, checked my condition in a single efficient glance, and pressed a small pill into my palm. "Ma'am. We're Mr. Moretti's people. He sent us to keep you covered."

Matto. He had known — he must have known from the beginning that tonight wasn't going to be simple, and he had kept people close enough to move the moment things went wrong.

I stared at the pill in my hand and didn't move. After everything that had just happened inside these four walls, I couldn't make myself trust anything without proof.

The man read my hesitation without a word and held out his phone, screen facing me.

A video call was already connected. The face on the other end was Matto's.

"Baby, don't be scared. I'm here."

The relief hit me so hard my eyes blurred. I put the pill in my mouth.

The effect was almost immediate — a clean, spreading coolness that rolled from my tongue upward, pushing back the fog, dissolving the numbness that had been dragging at my limbs. Within a few minutes, the weakness had retreated enough for me to get back on my feet.

Elias and his men were still pinned. Kyle, Lyra, and Mia had been gathered into the far corner of the living room under guard, all three of them pale and shaking in silence.

I looked around at what remained of the apartment — the broken door, the overturned evening, the wreckage of something I had spent years trying to protect — and felt the last of it go cold inside me. This was the family I had fought for. Everything warm I had believed about it had been a surface, and underneath, it had been rotting from the foundation for longer than I wanted to admit.

I walked to where Kyle was sitting and stopped in front of him. He looked up, his eyes full of fear and something that wanted to be a plea.

"Dad," I said, before he could speak.

"Leah, I —"

"You sold me out for his investment." I kept my voice even. "But here's what you don't know — the money that hit the company account, that mysterious investor you were so grateful for? That had nothing to do with Elias. Not one cent of it."

I let that settle for a moment.

"Because that investor was me."

Kyle's eyes went wide. "That's impossible. Where would you get that kind of money? That was eight hundred thousand dollars."

"Ridiculous." Lyra's voice cut across the room, sharp and contemptuous. "You hesitate before buying an expensive handbag. Where exactly would you have gotten eight hundred thousand to invest? That's the most absurd thing I've ever heard."

Mia didn't bother hiding her scorn. "Seriously, sis — if you're going to lie, at least make it believable. Elias comes from money. An investment like that is nothing for him. You couldn't scrape together a fraction of that amount."

From the floor, Elias let out a short, dismissive laugh. "Leah, I get it. You hate me. But there's no need to embarrass yourself like this just to save face." He shifted against the grip holding him down and looked up at me with the particular confidence of someone who had never once doubted that the world would bend to accommodate him."I suggest you help me up right now and take me home like a good girl. I'll think about cutting back on the other women — and I'll make sure they stay out of your sight. Otherwise, you can sit back and picture exactly what I'm doing with them in bed."

I didn't dignify that with a response. I turned to him and asked one question.

"Was it you?"

He blinked.

"If it was you," I said, "then you'd know the exact date the transfer was processed. You'd know the bank's handling timeline. You'd know how long it took to clear."

Elias scoffed, but something behind his eyes shifted. "What does that have to do with anything? The money wasn't sent to you. You say it was yours — prove it."