CHAPTER 67.
Willam made it to his office and brought out his phone placing a call through Jeremy.
"William?" Jeremy's voice came through immediately, tense with concern. "Dude what's happening, I've been watching the news all morning."
"It's all fabricated." William's voice was tight. "Every signature, every financial record, every goddamn photo. Someone's gone to a lot of trouble to destroy me, and I need to know who."
"Okay, okay. What do you need me to do?"
"I need you to trace everything. The original source of the leak, the metadata on those documents, the digital fingerprints on the forged signatures. Someone created this narrative, and they had to leave breadcrumbs."
"Consider it done. I'll call you the moment I have something concrete."
The line went dead, leaving William alone with his thoughts and the weight of impending battle. He slipped the phone back into his pocket and pressed his palms against the cool glass of the window.
"You've overplayed your hand this time, Carlos," William murmured to his reflection in the glass. "And when I'm done with you, there won't be enough left to scrape off the pavement."
__
At the Dray mansion.
Kate descended the mansion's grand staircase slowly, the Jones Corp. file pressed firmly against her chest like. Dark circles shadowed her eyes— she had not been sleeping well after William's revelations about Uncle Carlos and the documents she'd found. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw her parents' signatures on those transfer papers, felt the weight of a deception that had shaped her entire life.
"Ma'am, I'm so sorry to disturb you, but—" A maid rushed in with her face creased with worry. "It's all over the news. They're saying terrible things about Mr. William. About illegal shipping, money laundering—"
Kate's blood turned to ice. "What are you talking about?"
"The television, ma'am. Every channel. They have photographs, documents..." The maid's voice trailed off as she saw Kate's expression.
She brought out her phone immediately and opened the news.
The photos were damning—William at the docks, in meetings, signing papers—all presented with sinister context that transformed routine business into criminal conspiracy. The documents looked official, bore his signature, detailed financial transactions that painted him as the head of an illegal operation.
But Kate knew better. She'd seen enough doctored evidence in the past few days to recognize it when it stared her in the face.
"This is all fake," she whispered, scrolling through article after article, each one building on the last to create a comprehensive narrative of guilt. "Every single piece of it."
"Should I... should I try to reach Mr. William? Maybe he needs—"
"No." Kate's voice came out sharper than she intended. She looked up from her phone, mind racing. "He hasn't called. Hasn't texted. Nothing. You can go."
Kate sank into the leather chair behind the desk, the Jones Corp. file still clutched in her hands. Was this his way of protecting her again? The same protective instinct that had made him hide things about her parents, about Carlos, about the danger surrounding them all?
Or was there something else? Something he couldn't—or wouldn't—tell her?
She started to dial his number three separate times, her thumb hovering over the call button each time before she pulled back. The rational part of her mind screamed that she should reach out, should offer support, should demand answers. But a smaller, quieter voice whispered doubts she didn't want to acknowledge.
What if there was more to this than fake news and forged documents? What if William's protective silence wasn't about shielding her from danger, but about shielding her from the truth?
Kate set the phone down on the desk and stared at it, paralyzed between trust and suspicion, between love and self-preservation.
—
Willias's car pulled in front of the mansion just past midnight. The mansion was quiet, most of the lights dimmed, but he could see the soft glow from the living room spilling into the hallway. His shoulders sagged with exhaustion as he set his briefcase down and loosened his tie.
The boardroom confrontation, the emergency calls with his legal team, the hours spent with Jeremy trying to trace the source of the forged documents—it had all blurred together into one endless, suffocating day. All he wanted was to collapse into bed and pretend, for a few hours at least, that his world wasn't crumbling around him.
But as he rounded the corner into the living room, he found Kate curled in the corner of the leather sofa, still fully dressed despite the late hour. The Jones Corp. file lay open beside her, and her phone rested face-up on the coffee table, its screen dark but somehow accusatory.
She looked up when he entered, and he could see in her eyes that she knew everything.
"Long day?" she asked, her voice carefully neutral.
William ran a hand through his hair, not knowing what to say. "Kate, I—"
"Why didn't you tell me?" The question came out quietly, but there was steel underneath the softness.
He'd been preparing for this moment all day, rehearsing explanations and justifications, but now that it was here, all his carefully constructed reasons seemed inadequate.
"Because you have enough to worry about," he said finally, moving to the armchair across from her but not sitting. "The baby, your parents' company, Carlos... I didn't want to add another crisis to your plate."
Kate's expression didn't change, but he caught the slight tightening around her eyes. "So you thought it was better for me to find out from the news? To spend the entire day wondering if my—" she paused, the word 'husband' hanging unspoken between them, "—if you were hiding something from me again?"
The quiet accusation hit harder than any shouting match would have. William sank into the chair, suddenly unable to support his own weight.
"God, Kate, no. That's not... I wasn't hiding anything. I was trying to handle it before it could touch you, before it could hurt—"
"Us," she interrupted, leaning forward. "Before it could hurt us, William. Not just me. Us." Her hand moved unconsciously to her stomach. "We're connected now, whether you like it or not. What happens to you happens to all of us."
William looked at her—really looked—and saw the exhaustion that mirrored his own, the worry lines that had appeared seemingly overnight, the protective way she held herself. She was right, and they both knew it.
"I'm scared," he admitted, the words scraping against his throat. "Not of the charges or the board or even losing everything. I'm scared that by being with me, you're going to get caught in the crossfire. That our child will grow up with a father who's either in prison or completely destroyed by scandal."
Kate was quiet for a long moment, studying his face. When she finally spoke, her voice was gentler but no less firm.
"Do you remember what you told me when we found those documents about my parents? You said we'd face it together, that hiding from the truth wouldn't make it go away." She stood and moved to sit on the arm of his chair, close enough that he could smell her familiar perfume. "The same applies here."
William reached up and took her hand, intertwining their fingers. "Jeremy's working on tracing the digital footprints of the forged documents. We should have something concrete within forty-eight hours. The board wants proof of my innocence, and I'm going to give it to them."
"We're going to give it to them," Kate corrected, squeezing his hand. "I've been thinking about this all day, about the timing, about who benefits from destroying your reputation right now."
William looked up at her, seeing the determination in her eyes that had first drawn him to her. "Carlos."
"It has to be. We're getting too close to the truth about my parents' company, about what really happened. This is his way of neutralizing you, of making sure you can't help me anymore."
William felt something shift inside him—not hope exactly, but something close to it. The isolation he'd carried all day began to ease, replaced by the knowledge that he wasn't facing this alone.
"Then we'd better make sure he doesn't succeed," he said, bringing her hand to his lips and pressing a gentle kiss to her palm.
Kate smiled for the first time since he'd walked in. "No, we'd better make sure he regrets ever trying."