My Sister-in-Law Slapped Me at My Own Anniversary Dinner—And My Husband’s Silence Cost His Family Everything.7.8

Victoria Croft did not handle public humiliation with grace. When she lost the Horizon Tower bid to my firm three days later, her retaliation was swift, illegal, and entirely predictable.

It started with the supply chain.

I was standing in my studio, going over fabric swatches for the hotel lobby, when my lead logistics manager, Sarah, rushed into my office. She looked completely panicked.

"Emily, we have a catastrophic problem," Sarah said, dropping a stack of invoices onto my desk. "Our primary Italian marble supplier just canceled our contract. The shipment for the Horizon lobby is completely halted. They said a rival firm bought out their entire quarry production for the next two years."

I stared at the invoices. "Croft & Vanguard."

"Yes," Sarah swallowed hard. "But it gets worse. Three of our custom furniture manufacturers pulled out this morning. They cited 'breach of exclusivity clauses.' Emily, someone forged emails from your account releasing them from their contracts with us."

My blood ran instantly cold.

I didn't need to guess who had forged the emails. Nathan had done it before. He knew the inner workings of design logistics, and he had obviously retained enough knowledge of my old administrative protocols to bypass standard security. He was repeating his exact same crime, only this time, he was doing it for Victoria.

My phone buzzed on the desk. It was an unknown number. I answered it.

"Hello, Emily." It was Nathan. He sounded incredibly smug, emboldened by the shield of Victoria’s billions.

"You are committing federal wire fraud, Nathan," I said flatly.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he feigned innocence, though I could hear the sneer in his voice. "I just called to give you a heads-up. Since I am now a high-earning executive at Croft & Vanguard, my financial situation has changed. My lawyers are filing a new petition for primary custody of Lily and Owen tomorrow morning. We are going to claim your business is collapsing and creating an unstable environment for the children."

He was trying to terrify me. He was trying to push me back into the corner where I used to cower, begging for mercy.

I looked around my beautiful, sunlit studio. I thought about the peace I had fought so agonizingly hard to secure.

"Nathan," I said softly. "Do you know the definition of insanity?"

"Excuse me?"

"It’s doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result," I explained, my voice turning to absolute ice. "You tried to steal my business once. You failed. You tried to steal my children once. You failed. And now, you are acting as an attack dog for a woman who will discard you the second you become a liability."

"Victoria protects her people," Nathan snapped defensively.

"Victoria protects her money," I corrected. "And when the federal investigators trace those forged emails back to your IP address, Victoria will testify that you acted alone. You are the fall guy, Nathan. And you are too stupid to see it."

I hung up the phone before he could respond.

I didn't cry. I didn't panic. I walked out of my office and found Julian standing in the main studio, looking at a set of blueprints. He saw the expression on my face and immediately set the papers down.

"What did he do?" Julian asked, his jaw tightening into a lethal line.

"He forged vendor cancellations and threatened my custody," I said, walking right up to him.

Julian’s eyes went pitch black. The polished real estate developer vanished, replaced by a man ready to tear a city apart to protect the woman he loved. "I will handle him. By midnight, Nathan Cole won't be able to find a job cleaning gutters in this state."

"No," I said, placing my hands flat against Julian’s chest. I felt his heart hammering against my palms. "If you crush him, Victoria wins. She wants to bait us into a legal mudslinging match. We are not going to fight them in the mud, Julian. We are going to drown them in the paperwork."

Julian looked down at me, the fury in his eyes slowly melting into profound, awestruck admiration. "What do you need?"