His Chubby Obsession

Chapter Twenty-Six: V

I read the email four times before I let myself believe it was actually from her.

I can help you take him down. But you have to trust me first. — V

Enzo read it over my shoulder, his jaw tightening in the particular way it did whenever anything connected to Bruce's world got too close to us again.

"Valentina," he said, not a question.

"I think so." I stared at the two letters signed at the bottom, turning them over in my mind like a coin I couldn't decide the weight of. "Who else would sign it that way? Who else has any reason to reach out to me at all, let alone claim they can help take Bruce down?"

"It could be a trap. Bruce testing whether you'd respond to an anonymous lead."

"It could be." I didn't disagree, exactly. I'd learned, over the last week, not to hand my trust out easily, not even to people who seemed to deserve it. But something about the phrasing sat differently in my chest than a trap would have. Traps, in my experience, offered comfort, reassurance, an easy path back to something familiar. This offered nothing but a condition. You have to trust me first. That wasn't the language of someone trying to lure me somewhere safe-sounding. It was the language of someone who expected to be doubted, and was asking anyway.

"What do you want to do," Enzo asked.

"I want to know what she knows." I closed the laptop, my decision settling into place with a certainty that surprised me. "But I'm not going to walk into anything blind. Not again. If I respond, it's on my terms, and Sofia and Diane both know exactly what I'm doing before I do it."

Enzo studied me a long moment, something like reluctant respect moving across his face. "You've changed a lot in eight days."

"I've had a lot of practice."

—

Sofia was predictably against it.

"She was in the room laughing about ruining your life six days ago," she said flatly, arms crossed, the bruise along her jaw still dark and tender-looking. "Now she wants to help you? Forgive me if I don't exactly trust the timing."

"I don't trust it either," I admitted. "But I think the timing might actually be the point. Bruce's whole plan fell apart in front of everyone at that party. Papa Niel just publicly humiliated him. If Valentina was banking on a future with a man about to inherit two point three billion dollars, and that future just evaporated in front of forty witnesses — "

"Then she's not helping you out of guilt," Sofia finished, understanding dawning slowly across her face. "She's helping you because she just got a very expensive lesson in exactly how disposable she is to him too."

"Maybe." I looked between them both. "I'm not asking either of you to trust her. I'm asking you to let me find out what she actually knows, carefully, with both of you watching my back the entire time."

Diane, when I called her, was more measured than Sofia but no less cautious.

"If she genuinely has information about Bruce's finances, his father's board dealings, anything Papa Niel's succession terms might touch — that could be significant," she said. "But approach it like a hostile witness, Emma, not a friend. Get everything in writing where you can. Don't share anything about your location, your legal strategy, or Charlotte's whereabouts until you have real reason to trust her."

"Understood."

I sat with the reply for nearly an hour before I finally typed something back, weighing every word against the very real possibility that I was about to hand a weapon to the last woman on earth who deserved one.

I don't trust you. I'm not sure I ever will. But I'm listening. What do you know, and why does it suddenly matter to you to tell me?

I hit send before I could talk myself out of it, and then sat there, staring at the screen, feeling the particular vertigo of having stepped deliberately toward danger instead of away from it, because some part of me had finally decided that information, even dangerous information, was worth more than the false comfort of staying blind.

The reply came faster than I expected.

It matters because I finally understand what he thinks I'm worth, now that the money's not guaranteed anymore. And it's the same thing he always thought you were worth. Nothing. I heard him on the phone with his lawyer an hour after the party ended. He's already talking about "managing the Valentina problem" the same way he used to talk about "managing" you.

I want out. I want him to lose everything. And I know things that could help make that happen — things about his finances, his father's dealings, things that go back years before you ever married him.

But I need to know you won't use what I give you just to hurt me too. I've made mistakes, Emma. I know exactly how badly I've hurt you. I'm not asking you to forgive that. I'm asking you to let me help fix some of it anyway.

— V

I read it twice, feeling something complicated churn in my chest — not sympathy, not exactly, not yet, but something adjacent to it, the uncomfortable recognition of a woman discovering, one betrayal too late, that she'd built her entire future on the same foundation of sand I had.

"What does she want in exchange," Enzo asked, reading over my shoulder again.

"She hasn't said yet." I stared at the screen a long moment. "But I think I already know."

"What's that?"

"The same thing I wanted, six days ago, standing outside his office door." I looked up at Enzo, something settling into place behind my eyes that felt, for the first time in longer than I could remember, less like fear and more like the early architecture of a plan. "Somewhere to land, once she finally admits there's nothing left to stand on."