His Secret Addiction

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Alex's POV

I submitted my resignation an hour after the vote.

Damien didn't ask me to. Didn't even know I was doing it until I handed him a copy of the letter I'd sent to HR. We were back at his apartment, sitting in the wreckage of everything that had just happened.

"What did you do?" he asked, reading it.

"What I should have done in the board room. Removed myself from the situation." I sat across from him. "Sterling can't use our relationship against you anymore if I don't work there."

"I don't work there either."

"Not officially. But Victoria and Marcus are already planning how to get you back. I heard them on the phone in the car." I leaned forward. "They can't do that if Sterling keeps pointing to me as evidence of your poor judgment. So I'm gone. Clean break."

"You loved that job."

"I loved the work. The company?" I shrugged. "It's just a company. There are others."

He set the letter down. "You're doing it again."

"Doing what?"

"Building an exit strategy. Making yourself expendable before someone else can do it to you." He looked at me. "I told you to stop doing that."

"This isn't an exit strategy. This is removing an obstacle so you can get your company back."

"I don't want the company back if it costs you your career."

"My career is fine. I'm a senior marketing executive with a successful campaign on my resume. I'll have offers by next week." I meant it. I'd already gotten three LinkedIn messages from recruiters who'd seen the news. "But you built Ross Industries. Your grandmother built it. You don't get to just walk away because Sterling had the votes today."

"He'll always have the votes as long as I'm there."

"Then you change the board. Victoria and Marcus stay. You find three more people who believe in you. And you vote Sterling out the same way he voted you out." I stood. "But first you let Chen finish the investigation. You find the other three people Maya named. You prove you were right to pursue this, even if the board was too scared to back you."

Damien was quiet for a long moment. "You've thought this through."

"I had an hour in the car while you were on the phone with lawyers."

"And if I don't want the company back? If I'm done fighting Sterling and boards and people who don't trust me?"

"Then we do something else." I sat next to him. "But you don't get to make that decision today, when you're angry and hurt and exhausted. You make it in a month, when you've had time to think clearly."

He looked at me. "You're staying either way."

"I already told you I was."

"Even if I decide to walk away from everything?"

"Even then." I took his hand. "I didn't fall in love with your company, Damien. I fell in love with you. What you do for work doesn't change that."

He pulled me closer. Kissed me slowly, carefully, like he was trying to memorize the moment.

"I love you," he said against my mouth. "I should have said it before. I love you."

"I know."

"That's not the same as hearing it."

"Then say it again."

"I love you." He said it clearly this time. No exhaustion or defeat in his voice. Just truth. "And I'm sorry it took losing everything for me to say it properly."

"You haven't lost everything."

"Close enough."

We stayed on the couch for the rest of the afternoon. Didn't talk about board meetings or investigations or what came next. Just existed in the same space, holding onto something that felt solid when everything else had fallen apart.

Chen called at four.

"Reeves is talking," she said. "He confirmed Maya brought him into the network five years ago. He's giving us names of other people involved, both inside and outside Ross Industries."

"How many people?" Damien asked. He'd put her on speaker.

"Six total that we're bringing in for questioning. Three at Ross Industries. Three at other companies Maya worked with." Chen paused. "Damien, this is bigger than we thought. Maya wasn't just running a network inside your company. She built connections across multiple corporations. Used them all to move money between legitimate businesses and criminal organizations."

"The three at Ross Industries. Who are they?"

Chen listed names. Two accountants I vaguely recognized. And Sophie Chen.

Damien looked at me. "Sophie."

"We're bringing her in tomorrow morning," Chen said. "Reeves claims she helped create the legal structures that made the shell companies look legitimate. That she knew exactly what she was doing."

After Chen hung up, Damien stood and walked to the window.

"I was right," he said. "About Sophie."

"You were." I joined him. "And Sterling just handed her control of all the legal documentation about the investigation. She knows everything we know. Everything Chen knows."

"She'll run."

"Probably."

Damien called Marcus. "Sophie's one of the people Maya named. Chen's bringing her in tomorrow. We need to secure all legal documents tonight before she has a chance to destroy evidence."

"I'm on it," Marcus said. "Victoria and I are still in the building. We'll lock down her office now."

"Carefully. If she realizes what you're doing, she'll disappear."

---

We went back to the office at six.

Not officially. We didn't have access anymore. But Victoria met us in the parking garage and brought us up through the freight elevator. Took us to Sophie's office on the fourteenth floor.

Marcus was already there with two security guards, boxing up files.

"She left at five," Victoria said. "Told her assistant she had a personal emergency. Took her laptop and her phone."

"Did she take anything else?" Damien asked.

"We're still checking. But it looks like she cleared her desk pretty thoroughly." Victoria pointed to empty drawers. "Like someone who wasn't planning to come back."

Marcus pulled up security footage on his tablet. "She made three trips to her car. Two boxes each time. We don't know what was in them."

"Client files," Damien said. "Evidence. Anything that connects her to Maya's network." He looked at the empty office. "She's gone."

"Chen has a warrant," I said. "They'll find her."

"Maybe. If she's smart, she's already out of the country."

We stood in Sophie's office, surrounded by empty shelves and missing files, and I realized this was what Maya's network looked like. Not just one person. Not just obvious criminals. But respectable lawyers and accountants and operations managers who looked legitimate until suddenly they weren't.

"I should have seen it sooner," Damien said quietly.

"You saw it when you could," I told him. "That's all anyone can do."