Suing My Ex, the Don Chapter 08
In the dead of night, a sharp, continuous ringing woke me from my sleep. I blinked away the fatigue, reaching for the phone on the nightstand.
The screen flashed: Alexander.
I instantly swiped decline. The next second, the screen lit up again. I sighed, finally clicking answer.
Alexander’s voice came through, completely ragged and trembling. “Grace Reed… that child. Did we… did we actually have a baby together?”
My fingers clamped around the aluminum frame of the phone, my survival instinct screaming at me to cut the line. But before I could, the distinct, violent sound of flesh hitting flesh echoed from the speaker. He was violently striking his own face.
“I am a monster… a total monster… ” he wept. “I didn’t know, Grace… I swear to God if I had known, I would never have done it. I had no idea Isabella cut your mother’s funding… She assured me you had personally closed the account because you refused to accept De Luca charity… ”
“Grace, please believe me, I didn’t know the truth…
I kept my breathing perfectly calculated, my voice entirely flat. “Alexander, are you delivering this performance because you want my forgiveness, or because you need to quiet your own
conscience?”
Nothing but absolute, hollow silence answered me. Finally, he panicked, cutting the line from his end. I didn’t waste another thought on it, permanently blocking his number.
Within forty-eight hours, the De Luca Group officially filed for chapter seven bankruptcy, and the news of the high-society couple’s immediate divorce completely dominated the New York papers.
My life returned to its quiet, beautiful routine. Every morning, I walked down to the corner café, sipping an espresso while flipping through architectural travel magazines.
Until a sudden shadow blocked the morning sun. I looked up to find Isabella standing right beside my table. She was still styled in a custom Chanel suit, but her face looked entirely hollowed out and
exhausted.
“Can we talk?”
Five minutes later, we sat on opposite sides of a small iron table. The steam from our cups drifted between us as neither of us spoke a word. Finally, her mask cracked, her voice sharp with desperation, “Alexander has completely lost his mind, deploying every investigator to unearth the events from three years ago. You fed him those files, didn’t you? Grace Reed, the past is dead! Why the hell are you so intent on burning my entire life to the ground?”
i looked straight into her trembling eyes. “Isabella, have you lived inside your own lies for so lon that you’ve actually started believing them? I haven’t uttered a single word to your ex-husband. What exactly are you terrified of? After all, a clean conscience has no fear of ghosts. The universe operates on an absolute ledger, Isabella. Your collection day has simply arrived.”
Isabella suddenly let out a sharp, manic laugh, her eyes turning bloodshot with absolute distortion. “A ledger… a collection day! Beautiful! Do you honestly believe I owe the Reed family any gratitude? From the exact hour your father adopted me, I knew the truth: your parents were the monsters who murdered my father! Years ago, Reed Corporate forced my father to falsify their accounting logs to evade federal taxes, and when the Feds caught on, your father framed him, forcing him to commit suicide in our living room! ”
“I spent a decade playing the good little sister in your house just to leak your proprietary algorithms, orchestrate Alexander’s defection, and terminate your mother’s lifeline… I merely balanced the ledger! That was my justice! ”
I stared back at her erratic display, a soft, genuine laugh slipping through my lips.
“What the hell are you laughing at?” she hissed, her knuckles turning white around her porcelain
cup.
I took a slow, calculated sip of my coffee, looking at her with absolute pity. “I’m laughing because you actually convinced yourself you were a criminal mastermind, when in reality, you didn’t even
possess the intelligence to look at your own father’s real files. The story you’ve been feeding your
hatred is a total fiction.”
Isabella sneered. “My father left the entire narrative detailed in his private journal! You can’t
white-wash the Reed family’s crimes to me!”
I slowly shook my head. “Your father didn’t just falsify corporate ledgers, Isabella. He used his
executive clearance to systematically route twenty million dollars of Reed Corporate capital into a private Swiss routing loop. The investigators found two one-way international tickets booked
under your names. He was planning to take the money and leave the country with you.”
“But the federal authorities moved faster than his exit strategy. Knowing he faced a lifetime federal sentence, he committed suicide for one reason: to protect the stolen millions so the government couldn’t seize the trust fund he left for you. My father brought you into our home out of absolute loyalty to an old colleague, spending a decade ensuring you never had to carry the public stigma of being a fugitive embezzler’s daughter.”
“Isabella, your entire life’s mission was built on a delusion.”
Isabella’s face turned an absolute, hollow gray as she frantically shook her head. “No… no, you’re lying… that’s completely impossible! ”
The unredacted file is sitting in the FBI’s historical archive Go pull the public records if you don’t
believe me
I stood up, slid my briefcase over my shoulder, and walked away without looking back. Behind me, Isabella sat entirely paralyzed, her spine slowly deflating into the chair
