Chapter 261 - 0261: He Said He’s Here For The Files

Chapter 261: Chapter 0261: He Said He’s Here For The Files

Graham’s Point Of View

"Do you think Elena is behind it?"

The question didn’t hit me the way it should have. It didn’t shock me. Didn’t anger me. It just... settled. Heavy. Expected. Like a stone dropping into still water, sending ripples I’d already anticipated. I’d known this moment was coming from the instant we’d found the papers, had felt it approaching the way you feel a storm before the first drop of rain falls.

I didn’t answer immediately. Instead, I studied him, really looked at him. At the way his eyes had narrowed again, sharp and calculating, like everything had already shifted from anger to strategy. To suspicion. To blame. It was a familiar transformation, one I’d witnessed countless times throughout my life. My father never stayed vulnerable for long. Grief, humiliation, fear... none of it lingered. He converted every soft emotion into something harder, something he could wield, and I’d learned long ago not to expect anything different from him.

There had been a time, maybe, when I thought I could change that about him, soften the edges he’d sharpened over decades of boardrooms and betrayals. I’d given up on that particular hope years ago. I exhaled slowly, my gaze dropping briefly to the signed documents on the table before lifting back to him. The papers seemed to mock us both, sitting there so innocuously despite the chaos they represented, as if ink and paper alone could unravel everything my family had built.

I paused. Because the answer wasn’t simple, and he wouldn’t accept anything complicated. Not right now. Not when everything was burning around us and he needed someone to point his fury toward. I understood that need better than I wanted to. It ran in the blood, apparently - this instinct to find a target, to transform pain into something actionable.

I rubbed my thumb against the side of my palm absentmindedly, thinking. Because yes... anyone with half a brain would connect it. The timing. The divorce papers. The message. The pressure. It all pointed in one direction like arrows on a map leading to a single destination. Still, something about the simplicity of it nagged at me, a small voice insisting that the obvious answer was rarely the whole truth. I’d learned that lesson in this family the hard way, more than once.

But I shook my head slightly, feeling the weight of what I was about to say. Then I finally spoke.

"Yes."

My voice came out calm, too calm for the tension crackling in the room like static electricity before a storm. My father didn’t blink. Of course he didn’t. He’d been waiting for confirmation, not revelation. I almost admired how little the answer seemed to cost him, how easily he absorbed it into whatever calculation he was already running behind those sharp eyes.

"I thought as much," he said, his jaw tightening.

I continued before he could say anything else, before he could launch into the tirade I saw building behind his eyes. "Because the papers are here." I tapped the file lightly with my fingers, the sound sharp in the quiet room. "With her signature on it. Fresh ink, perfect timing."

My mother shifted slightly beside him, her arms crossing as she listened. I caught the faint tremor in her fingers before she tucked them away, hiding her anxiety behind a practiced mask of composure. She had always been good at that - burying what she felt beneath layers of control, so much so that I sometimes wondered if even she remembered what lay underneath anymore. I wondered, too, what it had cost her over the years, all that careful concealment, and whether she ever let herself feel anything in private that she wouldn’t dare show us.

"But this level of power?" I added, my tone tightening just a fraction as I met my father’s gaze directly. "Coordinating something this sophisticated, this damaging? I doubt it. Elena’s smart, but this? This requires resources and connections she simply doesn’t have."

That got a reaction.

My father’s brows pulled together, the lines deepening across his forehead in a way I’d learned to recognize as the prelude to something unpleasant. I braced myself instinctively, the way I always did, my shoulders tensing before I even realized I’d moved them.

"What do you mean you doubt it?" he asked, each word clipped and deliberate.

"I mean exactly that," I said, gesturing toward the documents scattered across the desk like evidence at a crime scene. The papers seemed to mock us with their neat columns of devastating numbers, cold figures that somehow carried the weight of everything we stood to lose.

"This..." I pointed at the reports, my finger hovering over the most damning figures, " - this isn’t something she can do. Not alone, at least."

"She’s your wife," my father said, as if that simple fact explained everything, as if marriage automatically conferred some kind of corporate espionage expertise. There was an accusation buried in the word, one aimed less at Elena than at me, at my judgment, at my failure to see something sooner.

"That doesn’t make her capable of dismantling a company overnight." I kept my voice level, refusing to let frustration bleed into my tone, though it took more effort than I wanted to admit. "You’re giving her too much credit for something that requires an entire network."

My mother stepped in then, her heels clicking softly against the hardwood as she moved closer to the desk. She’d been quiet until now, observing, calculating, the way she always did before choosing the exact moment to speak. "Then there must be someone behind her," she said, her voice quieter than before, but sharper now, honed to a fine point. "Someone powerful enough to orchestrate this."

The words settled in the room like dust after an explosion, filling every corner with their implications. And this time, for the first time since we’d discovered the extent of the damage, they made sense.

Too much sense.

My father’s jaw tightened, the muscle there jumping visibly. His hands curled slightly into fists at his sides, knuckles whitening with the pressure of restrained fury. I watched the transformation happen in real time, the way his whole body seemed to coil tighter with every passing second, and I found myself wondering how much longer he could hold that tension before something gave.

"Not only couldn’t she give us an heir..." His voice dropped, anger seeping through every word now like poison through fabric. The old wound, the one he’d never let heal, opened fresh and raw. "...she now wants to ruin my company?"

I sighed under my breath, feeling the familiar weight of this particular grievance settle on my shoulders. It was an old argument dressed in new clothes, and I hated how easily he still reached for it, how readily he let that resentment color everything else. Some wounds, I realized, he kept deliberately open, as if the pain gave him something to aim with.

"Dad..."

"She’ll regret it," he cut me off, the promise in his tone unmistakable.

The way he said it made something tighten in my chest... a cold fist of apprehension squeezing just beneath my ribs. Not fear, not exactly. But caution. The kind born from years of watching him operate, of seeing what happened when someone crossed the line he’d drawn around what was his.

Because when he spoke like that, with that particular edge of cold certainty, things escalated. Fast. I’d seen the aftermath before, the wreckage he left when that tone took over, and I had no desire to watch it happen again.

"Don’t do anything irrational," I said, the words leaving my mouth before I could stop them, before I could consider whether they’d help or hurt.

His head snapped toward me, eyes narrowing with dangerous focus. "Irrational?" The word came out slow, measured, each syllable weighted with warning. "You think I’m being irrational?"

"That’s not what I..." I started, already knowing I’d stepped into quicksand.

"No, say it." He stepped closer, invading the space I’d unconsciously claimed as mine. "Tell me what exactly is irrational about this situation. About protecting what I’ve built."

I held his gaze, refusing to back down even as my pulse kicked up a notch. "This is an attack," I said carefully, choosing each word like I was defusing a bomb. "And reacting without knowing everything... without understanding the full scope could make it worse."

His laugh was short, sharp. Cold enough to frost the air between us.

"Worse?"

"Yes."

"Explain that to me, Graham." He crossed his arms, the gesture somehow both defensive and aggressive. "Explain how defending my company could possibly make things worse."

I exhaled slowly, buying myself a moment to organize my thoughts, aware that whatever I said next would either calm him or ignite him further. "Whoever is behind this... if it’s not Elena alone, and we both know it probably isn’t, then we’re dealing with someone who has reach. Real reach."

"I can see that," he said, his tone suggesting I was stating the obvious.

"And going after her blindly, without knowing who’s pulling the strings, won’t solve anything." I kept my voice steady, reasonable, even as I watched his expression darken further, the muscles along his jaw flexing with barely restrained impatience.

"It will send a message," he countered, his conviction absolute.

"It could also provoke a stronger response," I said. "We don’t know what we’re dealing with yet. We don’t know who has this kind of power, or what they’re willing to do next."

He stared at me. The silence stretched between us, thick with unspoken accusations. Then he shook his head slightly, a gesture of disbelief mixed with disappointment, the kind he’d perfected over years of finding me somehow lacking.

"You’re still protecting her," he said.

"I’m being logical," I countered.

"You’re being soft," he shot back.

I let out a quiet breath, forcing myself to maintain composure even as frustration simmered beneath the surface, threatening to crack the calm I’d worked so hard to hold onto.

"And you’re being reactive," I said.

That did it. His eyes darkened immediately, the shift so sudden it felt like watching a storm roll in, thunderheads gathering where moments ago there had only been clear, cold calculation.

"Watch your tone," he warned.

"Then listen to what I’m saying," I pressed.

"I’ve listened enough tonight." His voice carried the weight of finality, as though the conversation had already ended in his mind, the verdict delivered long before the trial concluded.

My mother stepped in again, positioning herself slightly between us, her presence a physical reminder that we were still, despite everything, family. "That’s enough, both of you," she said.

Her voice cut through the tension just enough to stop it from tipping over into something we couldn’t walk back from.

"We’re not getting anywhere like this," she added, her tone measured but firm. She looked at me, her expression softer now, more thoughtful, and for a moment I saw something like gratitude flicker across her features. "Graham is right about one thing," she said.

My father didn’t respond, though his jaw tightened visibly. But he didn’t interrupt either, which was something, a small concession I knew better than to point out. Even silence, from him, felt like a victory worth savoring quietly.

"This isn’t random," she continued, choosing her words carefully. "And if there’s someone behind Elena, then we need to know who before we act."

He scoffed lightly, the sound dismissive. "And while we ’figure it out,’ they keep tearing us apart piece by piece?" he challenged.

"That’s not what I’m saying," she replied, her patience beginning to fray at the edges, though she kept her voice admirably even.

"Then what are you saying?" he demanded.

"I’m saying think before you move," she said, meeting his gaze directly, not flinching despite the storm visible in his eyes. "Strategy, not impulse."

Silence stretched again, filling the room like water rising. Heavy. Suffocating. I found myself holding my breath without quite realizing it, waiting to see which way the balance would tip.

Then, a knock. Sharp. Clear.

All three of us paused, the interruption jarring in its ordinariness. For a moment, nobody moved, as though acknowledging the sound might make the tension in the room somehow worse.

The sound felt out of place, too normal for everything happening inside the room, too mundane for the crisis we were navigating.

My mother was the first to speak, straightening slightly, smoothing invisible wrinkles from her composure along with her dress. "Come in," she called.

The door opened slowly, almost hesitantly. One of the staff stepped inside, his posture straight and professional, but his expression slightly tense, as though he sensed he was walking into something volatile. I almost felt sorry for him, whoever he was, walking blind into the wreckage of our family’s unraveling.

My father turned toward him immediately, his attention shifting with predatory focus. "What do you want?" he asked, his tone clipped.

The man hesitated for a fraction of a second before speaking, clearly weighing his words, his eyes flicking briefly toward each of us as if gauging who might be safest to address. "There’s a man outside, sir," he said.

That got everyone’s attention. The atmosphere in the room shifted instantly, tension redirecting toward this new development, the argument between my father and me forgotten, at least for the moment.

"A man?" my father repeated, his voice sharp with suspicion.

"Yes, sir," the staff member confirmed.

"And?" my father prompted, impatience creeping into his tone.

The man swallowed, then delivered the rest.

"He said he’s here for the files."