My husband threw my birthday cake on the floor and told me to eat it like a dog, unaware I owned every single asset he bragged about.

The silence in the marble lobby was thick enough to suffocate. Dozens of industry peers—men and women Grant had spent three years posturing in front of—watched with wide, predatory eyes. In Nashville, nothing spreads faster than blood in the water.

Sabrina stepped forward, her voice trembling with manufactured outrage. "Natalie, you can't do this! Grant built this company! We have artists arriving from London this afternoon! You're going to get him sued for millions!"

I turned my gaze to Sabrina. Up close, without her professional lighting and flattering filters, the veneer was already cracking. Her designer trench coat looked cheap against the harsh fluorescent fixtures of the lobby.

"Miss Cross," I said mildly. "I suggest you take your hands out of Grant's pocket before you find yourself named as a co-conspirator in a federal wire fraud indictment."

Sabrina recoiled as if slapped. "What?"

"The offshore account you opened in Grand Cayman last November? The one named 'Crossfire Media'?" I took a single step closer to the security barrier. "Grant transferred seven hundred and eighty thousand dollars into that account over an eight-month period. He told you it was his private distribution. He told you it was your future nest egg."

Sabrina’s eyes flickered toward Grant, wide and alarmed. "Grant? What is she talking about?"

Grant lunged forward again, but the guards caught his wrists, pinning him against the security turnstile. "Shut up, Natalie! Shut your mouth!"

"He didn't steal his own money, Sabrina," I continued, speaking clearly so every phone recording in the lobby could capture every syllable. "He stole it from the client escrow account. Arden Trust guarantees those escrows. Which means Grant was embezzling directly from *my* family's capital reserves to buy you Cartier bracelets and fly you to St. Barts."

"That's a lie!" Grant yelled, sweat soaking through his collar. "She's fabricating it! She’s trying to destroy me because she caught us! She’s a bitter, discarded wife!"

"A discarded wife?" I reached into Julian's folder and pulled out a single sheet of embossed parchment. "This is the corporate resolution for Apex Touring. Section Four, Paragraph B: Any unauthorized diversion of capital exceeding fifty thousand dollars automatically liquidates the managing partner’s equity shares and vests them entirely in the senior guarantor."

I held the paper up so Grant could see the ink.

"You don't own fifty-one percent of Apex anymore, Grant. You don't even own zero percent. You are an employee who has been terminated for cause."

"You can't fire me!" he screamed, his voice breaking into a bizarre, high-pitched squeak. "I am the brand! Nobody works with Arden! They work with Grant Holloway!"