Chapter 4 : The Silent Audit
Three days later, the mansion—the very place where Mariana had been slapped—was under siege. It wasn't by soldiers, but by auditors and federal agents.
Mariana stood across the street, watching from the darkened interior of a sedan. She saw the flash of cameras, the frantic movements of Julian’s mother, Margaret, as she tried to shout orders at people who no longer worked for her. Julian himself stood on the porch, his suit rumpled, his hair unkempt, staring at the empty driveway as his luxury cars were towed away, one by one.
He looked for her. His gaze scanned the street, desperate and searching. He was looking for his wife—the woman he had dismissed, the woman he had told to kneel. He didn't realize that the woman he was looking for was the one who had just signed the order to freeze his last remaining personal account.
"He looks small, doesn't he?" Carlos, her driver, murmured from the front seat.
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"He is small," Mariana replied. "He was always small. I just spent four years living in the shadow he cast, thinking it was a mountain."
She didn't stay to watch him crumble further. She had a meeting with the Board of Directors—a board that had been hand-picked by the Scalino trust years before Julian even started his company. She was going to take the chair, not for the power, but to liquidate the assets and ensure the Thorne name was removed from every charity, every building, and every record he had touched. She was going to perform a surgical strike on his history.
