Chapter 5: The Blacklist
"There's no rush, Mrs. Crawford. She has the rest of her life to think it over."
Sebastian's low, roughened voice settled close to Sophia's ear.
He eased back into his seat and used his uninjured hand to pull his shirt cuff down, concealing the scar beneath the fabric once more.
Sophia watched him settle, yet found she couldn't breathe. She sat rigid, her mind screaming with questions she couldn't untangle—until his words sealed every one of them behind her teeth.
The partition between the front and rear compartments slid down. The assistant leaned through and handed a tablet to the back seat.
"The asset-freeze petition against the Windsor family has been filed with the court. The legal division has completed a full audit of all real estate holdings and cash flow under their name—including three shell companies Evelyn maintains offshore. The damages claim is large enough to push Windsor Estate into bankruptcy liquidation by sunset tomorrow."
The assistant continued.
"Regarding Evelyn's deliberate destruction of the will, the legal team has already coordinated with a senior NYPD detective in Manhattan. A felony arrest warrant is currently being processed. The moment it clears, she'll be taken into custody with no possibility of bail."
The legal arm of a top-tier financial empire never disappointed.
Sophia absorbed each clause—each one sufficient on its own to erase the Windsor name entirely—yet her gaze kept drifting, without her permission, to the bandaged hand resting in Sebastian's lap.
She leaned back against the headrest. Her phone hadn't stopped vibrating.
Mia had sent a string of voice messages. Sophia accepted the call.
"Sophia, check Twitter right now. The Windsors bought a bot army—they're repackaging Evelyn as the victim. The whole platform is piling on you. They're even spreading rumors that you've been squashing other artists to kill their careers."
There was noise in the background on Mia's end—frantic keyboard clatter.
"And Evan, that piece of trash, just posted too. He's out there insinuating your personal life is a mess and flat-out lying that you're being kept by some rich older man."
"God, I could scream!"
Sophia opened Twitter. The top three trending topics were all about her. The Art Association's blacklist order had been artificially pushed to the front page.
【Thief! Plagiarist, get out!】
【I know the address of her studio in Brooklyn…】
Sophia gripped her phone, unlocking the screen to dig into her cloud backup for whatever evidence remained—enough to fight back.
A hand cut across hers—lean, sharp-knuckled—and lifted the phone clean out of her grip.
Then a warm palm came down over her eyes. The heat from his skin traveled through her lashes, his calloused palm pressing lightly against her face.
"It's filth. Don't look."
Sebastian's voice came from somewhere above her head.
He pressed the hands-free key built into the seat panel. The line connected directly to the Crawford Group's M&A division at headquarters.
Looking at the girl sitting with his hand over her eyes, he gave the order without preamble.
"Ten minutes. Acquire fifty-one percent controlling interest in the New York Art Association's board of directors. I don't care what methods you use or how much capital you deploy. I want the signed contracts on the table."
A sharp intake of breath from the M&A executive on the other end. A hundred-billion-dollar multinational conglomerate launching a hostile takeover of a private industry organization—it defied every principle of normal business logic. But no one on that line was going to say so.
"Understood, sir. Initiating a full-scale acquisition immediately."
The call ended.
Sebastian lowered his hand and, in the same motion, smoothed back the few strands of hair that had slipped loose near Sophia's ear.
"Change of plans. Don't go to the estate—take us to the New York Art Association headquarters."
At that same moment, inside the live broadcast studio on the upper floors of the Art Association building, rows of high-definition cameras were trained on the dais.
The Association president sat at the center. Evelyn sat beside him, her face composed into the practiced expression of a wounded victim. Artificial tear tracks caught the overhead lighting and shimmered with calculated fragility.
She clutched a restored copy of a painting draft in both hands, angling her injured knuckles deliberately toward Camera One.
The live chat was scrolling so fast the servers began to lag.
【This industry has no room for thieves and parasites—plagiarist, get out of New York!】
【Evelyn's hands are hurt. Why should this freeloader hold onto Windsor family resources? And she had the nerve to attack someone?】
【Even her ex-boyfriend is coming out to expose her—being kept by a sugar daddy. Disgusting.】
Evelyn watched the follower count climbing in the backend dashboard. This was the media storm she and her mother had spent weeks engineering. If they could permanently brand Sophia with the mark of a plagiarist, the burned will could never be resurrected—and the Delgado Group shares would belong to the Windsor family forever.
The president cleared his throat and faced the cameras.
"In light of Sophia Delgado's egregious acts of plagiarism and the severe harm she has caused to her peers in the industry, the Association's emergency committee vote has concluded. We will now formally sign the order for her permanent blacklisting. Henceforth, the Association will refuse to display or facilitate the sale of any of her works."
He reached for the pen.
The studio doors swung open.
Sebastian walked in with Sophia at his side, one hand at her back.
The moment Evelyn recognized the man beside Sophia, her legs gave out beneath her. She sank back into her chair.
The pain from what had happened in that Brooklyn studio hours ago was still tearing through her nervous system.
She had never imagined he would actually walk through those doors—live, on camera, in front of the entire internet.
The Crawford Group's head of legal followed Sebastian through the door and dropped a document onto the table, directly on top of the blacklist order.
"Fifty-one percent. Full controlling interest in the New York Art Association."
For ten full seconds, in front of an audience of millions, the studio went completely still.
"Since this Association now falls under Crawford Group management—"
Sebastian's voice carried the flat chill of someone who had already decided the outcome. "—that so-called blacklist order can be treated as scrap paper."
【Wait—he just bought the whole Association?!】
【Classic capital whitewashing. Sophia really is being kept. There it is.】
The black comments flooded the backend feed. Evelyn's fingers tightened around the forged painting draft, and the terror that had gripped her moments ago cracked open—a savage flicker of triumph breaking through.
Sophia had no evidence. None. She was being propped up entirely by this man's money and power. And without proof, the plagiarism label would stick to her name for the rest of her career. The Windsor family wasn't beaten yet.
Sebastian saw exactly what Evelyn was calculating. He didn't bother to offer any rebuttal. His broad hand curved around the back of Sophia's head, drawing her into the shelter of his space.
"The show's over. We're leaving."
He turned to the assistant beside him. "Send word to the events team—Crawford Group is hosting a gala in three days. Make sure Windsor family receives a formal invitation. Top-tier. The highest protocol we have."
Sebastian's eyes settled on Evelyn one last time—on that look of a woman who thought she'd just won.
There was nothing in his gaze but a cold, patient cruelty.
"Tell them to come prepared."
Ten minutes later, the Maybach merged back into the Manhattan night.
The tension that had been holding Sophia upright for hours finally released. She became aware, only now, that her palms were damp with sweat.
"Have the private physician standing by when we arrive."
Sebastian spoke quietly to the secretary in the front seat, his eyes moving to the scrape on Sophia's knee from the earlier confrontation.
She caught his gaze and instinctively drew her leg back.
Then, from the corner of her eye, she watched Sebastian reach into his jacket with his uninjured hand and take out a phone.
His long fingers tapped out a six-digit passcode.
A soft chime.
The screen unlocked.
And then Sophia went still.
Those six digits—
How is that possible?
July 31st. 00:25.
Why would he use those numbers as his passcode?
The image surfaced without warning: a pair of arms in the middle of a fire, ten years ago, shoving him toward safety. Now those arms and the man sitting beside her began to collapse into a single shape in her mind.
Who is he, really?
Why did he marry her?
And why does he keep protecting her—again and again?
