Cassandra’s eyes flashed with something animal. “You think you’ll win?” she spat. “You think people will believe her?” She jerked her chin toward where Naomi had been. “A maid? A nobody?”
Marcus’s voice went quiet.
7. Aftermath
The scandal detonated the way scandals always do: suddenly, and everywhere.
By noon, Marcus’s name was trending. By evening, Cassandra’s face was everywhere, frozen in glamorous photos beside headlines that made her look like a villain in a modern fairy tale.
But Marcus didn’t feel victorious.
He felt… emptied out.
A test, Elliot had called it.
Marcus now understood that tests don’t just reveal other people. They reveal you.
He’d built an empire but failed to notice rot in his own home until it turned vicious. He’d been so focused on deals and power that he’d trusted charm more than character.
Cassandra was arrested later that day. Not for being cruel—cruelty often escapes consequences when it wears perfume—but for what she tried to do with money, signatures, and threats. Paper crimes. Crimes the law could measure.
Marcus knocked gently before entering.
Naomi looked up, guarded, tired, eyes rimmed with red not from tears but from adrenaline leaving the body.
Marcus took a step inside and stopped.
He didn’t want to crowd her.
He didn’t want to look like a man who assumed he owned gratitude the way he owned buildings.
“Are they okay?” he asked.
Naomi nodded, smoothing the hair of one boy who’d fallen asleep against her shoulder. “They’re scared,” she said. “But they’re safe.”
Naomi’s mouth tightened. “I did what anyone should.”
Marcus shook his head slowly. “No,” he said. “You did what most people don’t.”
Naomi glanced at him, eyes sharp despite exhaustion. “Are you going to fire me now that I’m inconvenient?”
The question landed like a small stone thrown at a glass window.
Marcus felt shame flare—because he understood exactly why she’d ask it.
He shook his head. “No,” he said quietly. “But I’m going to change the terms.”
Naomi frowned. “The terms?”
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