The Billonaire's Broken Vows

Chapter 5

Sophie’s Pov

The file Noah pulled from behind the wall was thin but heavy. Inside were photographs, emails printed on old paper, and handwritten notes that dated back five years.

As I looked through them, sitting on Noah’s bed at midnight in a house that was actively trying to destroy me, everything I thought I knew collapsed.

My name is Noah Kingston, and I’m about to tell my brother’s fiancée the truth that got me exiled from my own family.

The scandal that destroyed my life had nothing to do with me.

Five years ago, Kingston Industries was on the verge of a massive deal with Marlowe Tech. The deal was worth eighty million dollars. My father was excited. My brother was positioned to lead the project. Everything was set up perfectly.

Except my father decided he wanted to steal from his partner.

The emails showed it all. Carefully worded messages between my father and the company’s CFO, discussing how they could divert funds, how they could falsify reports, how they could make the deal collapse in a way that would benefit Kingston Industries while destroying Marlowe Tech. It was an embezzlement. It was a fraud. It was everything the law would consider a serious crime.

And when the deal started to fall apart, my father needed a scapegoat.

He chose me.

I was younger, more reckless. My father simply created evidence that I had sabotaged the deal, forged my signature on false documents, and then turned me in to the authorities. He positioned himself as the disappointed father forced to report his own son.

And I, being the stupid kid I was, agreed to take the fall.

Why? Because my father told me that if I didn’t, he would destroy anyone I cared about. Any future partner. Any friend. Anyone I dared to love would become a target.

So I took the blame. I spent three years fighting a case that I knew I couldn’t win. And when the case was finally dismissed on a technicality, I simply disappeared. I made myself into the villain they’d painted me to be.

It was easier that way.

But then my father called me back. And I knew something had changed.

“Why are you showing me this?” Sophie asked, her voice shaking as she held one of the emails. “Why now?”

“Because my father called me back here,” I said. “And I think he’s planning something worse than what he did to me.”

I pulled out the final document. It was a recent letter from my father’s lawyer outlining something called an “inheritance consolidation.” In plain language, it meant that when my father died, his entire estate would go to Daniel. And Daniel alone. Sophie would get nothing. No money. No security. No safety net.

“He’s not marrying you for love,” I said quietly. “He’s marrying you to control you. And once you’re completely bound to him, once you have no way out, he’ll show you his true self.”

Sophie stood up and started pacing around the room.

“But why me?” she asked. “Why would he target me specifically? I’m nobody. I have nothing.”

“That’s exactly why,” I replied. “My father needs someone he can control completely. Someone desperate enough to accept almost anything. He looked for someone like you, Sophie. Someone with a sick sister. Someone with no family support. Someone with everything to lose and nothing to fall back on.”

“That’s insane,” Sophie whispered.

“Welcome to the Kingston family,” I said bitterly. “Where everything is a transaction and everyone is a piece on a chess board.”

Sophie sank back onto the bed. She had given up her freedom for a promise that was never real. She had walked into a trap, and now she was realizing there might be no way out.

“What do I do?” she asked, looking up at me with desperate eyes. “If I try to leave, Daniel will cut off Elena’s treatment. If I stay, I’m signing myself up for a lifetime of control and manipulation. There’s no winning here.”

“There might be one way,” I said carefully.

I showed her the plan I’d been developing. It involved gathering more evidence of the original crime. It involved going to the authorities with what we had. It involved taking down the entire Kingston empire if we had to.

But it would mean that Sophie would have to become a spy in her own engagement. She would have to pretend everything was fine while secretly gathering information. She would have to lie to Daniel’s face every single day.

“He’ll know,” Sophie said. “He’ll figure it out. He already knows I went through the archives.”

“Then we have to be smarter than he is,” I replied. “And we have to move fast. The engagement party is in three days. The wedding happens in two weeks. We have to get everything we need before you’re legally bound to him.”

Sophie was quiet for a long time. I could see her weighing her options. Stay and lose herself. Leave and condemn her sister. Or fight and risk everything.

“What if we fail?” she finally asked.

“Then Daniel will know that you’ve betrayed him,” I said honestly. “And I don’t know what he’ll do. My father taught him everything about manipulation and control. And Daniel has always been smarter than me.”

Sophie looked at me, and I could see the exact moment she made her decision. The resignation. The acceptance. The understanding that she had already crossed the line the moment she opened those documents in the basement.

“Okay,” she said quietly. “I’ll do it. But Noah, if this goes wrong—”

“It won’t,” I interrupted, but we both knew I was lying.

She started to leave, but I grabbed her hand. “Sophie, once you commit to this, there’s no going back. You understand that, right? Your life will never be the same.”

“My life was already never going to be the same,” she replied. “At least this way, I get to choose.”

She slipped out of my room and disappeared down the hallway like a ghost. And I sat there in the darkness, holding the documents that could destroy my family, knowing that I had just pulled an innocent woman into something far more dangerous than she could possibly understand.

My phone buzzed. A text from my father: “We need to talk. Come to my study.”

As I walked down the hallway toward my father’s study, I heard a sound from the main staircase. I looked down and saw Daniel standing in the shadows, watching me.

How long had he been standing there? Had he seen Sophie leave my room?

“Going somewhere?” Daniel asked, his voice echoing through the empty mansion.

“To talk to Father,” I replied carefully. “He asked me to come.”

Daniel descended the stairs slowly, like he was hunting me. “It’s late, brother. Seems like a lot of people are having trouble sleeping tonight.”

The way he said it made my blood run cold. He knew. Somehow, he already knew that Sophie had come to me.

“Just insomnia,” I said, trying to keep my voice neutral.

“Is that what you call it?” Daniel smiled. “Because it looks to me like you and Sophie are becoming very close very quickly. And you know how Father feels about people who try to interfere with family business.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

“No, I suspect you don’t,” Daniel replied. “Not yet. But you will.”

He walked past me, heading toward his room, but before he disappeared down the hallway, he called back over his shoulder one final time.

“By the way, brother. You might want to know that Victoria just got back from her trip. She’s upstairs, and she’s very interested in meeting your new friend Sophie. Apparently, she has some concerns about the wedding.”

My heart stopped.

Victoria. Daniel’s mother. The woman who had orchestrated my downfall five years ago. The woman who was capable of anything if it meant protecting the family’s reputation.

She was here, and she was suspicious.

And Sophie had no idea what was about to hit her.