MARRIED TO MY MISTAKE

Chapter 27

POV: Rhea

The office was unusually quiet for a Thursday evening. Most of the team had already left after a chaotic week filled with overlapping deadlines and tense meetings. The buzz of the floor had slowly faded into silence, leaving only the hum of the central air and the distant echo of elevators.

Rhea sat in her corner, still at her desk, eyes flicking across the document on her screen.

Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, but she wasn’t typing.

She couldn’t.

The name was right there. Bold. Unmistakable.

Richard Cole.

Her breath caught in her throat as her eyes scanned the details again, slowly this time, as if giving her mind a chance to adjust to the blow.

This wasn’t just speculation. It wasn’t just another article she had read online months ago or a half-whispered rumor she had tracked down late at night in her apartment.

This was a contract. An internal memo. A string of transactions between shell companies, all leading back to the same man.

Richard Cole.

And the year?

The exact year her family lost everything.

Rhea sat back slowly in her chair, the screen casting a pale light across her face. The silence around her deepened until even her own thoughts felt like they were echoing inside her head.

There it was. Proof.

The smoking gun.

Her fingers gripped the edge of her desk to steady herself. Eight months. Eight long, calculated, exhausting months of working her way into this world. Eight months of playing by their rules, staying two steps ahead, collecting pieces quietly, patiently.

And finally—finally—something solid.

She should have felt triumphant.

But her chest felt tight.

The folder had been buried deep in the archives of their private server, hidden in an old project file mislabeled under a real estate venture that never launched. If she hadn’t been searching through contract backlogs for the Camden case, she never would’ve found it.

Fate or accident, she didn’t know. All she knew was that her hands were trembling.

A strange wave of cold moved through her. Not fear.

Resolve.

This is it, Rhea. This is why you’re here.

She closed the file gently, saved it under a coded name, and transferred it to her encrypted drive. Every move she made felt clinical, practiced, necessary. She had done this before. Clean. Quiet. Untraceable.

Still, when she leaned back again and stared at the darkened screen, her reflection stared back at her, eyes wide and heavy.

And then, like an unwanted whisper in her mind, his voice crept in.

“I trust your judgment.”

Her stomach turned.

Why now? Why did that sentence keep echoing inside her at the most inopportune times?

Damian had said it barely a week ago, after she’d navigated a tight negotiation during the Camden planning session. His voice had been calm. Unreadable. But something about the way he looked at her afterward stuck.

It wasn’t like the other times.

It wasn’t cold. Or calculating. It was something else. Something… gentler.

She clenched her jaw and shook her head.

Stop.

She stood up from her chair abruptly, pushing it back with a soft scrape. The movement startled her out of the spiral she hadn’t even realized she was in.

This wasn’t the time for weakness. Not when she was this close.

She walked to the windows, arms crossed over her chest, staring down at the glittering city below. From up here, it looked almost peaceful. As if the streets didn’t hold the memories she buried every single day.

She remembered her father’s face the day they lost the company. His pride shattered. His name dragged through the mud. The cruel way the media turned him into a punchline. The way investors pulled out without blinking. And how, beneath it all, there had always been one shadow they could never reach.

Richard Cole.

Now she had the thread. All she had to do was pull.

And yet—

Her throat tightened.

She couldn’t ignore the way her chest had reacted when Damian defended her in that meeting. The way he stood up, not for control or dominance, but for her. How quick he had been to shut down Harold. How steady his voice had sounded.

It didn’t fit the version of him she had constructed all these months.

And that made it dangerous.

Because if she allowed herself to see something real in him, something good, it would unravel everything.

This is not love. This is justice.

This is not safety. This is vengeance.

You’re here to finish what they started.

She forced herself to breathe in deeply, and then again, until her heart stopped racing.

Whatever he was feeling—or whatever she was starting to feel—none of it changed the facts.

He was a Cole.

And the blood on Richard’s hands had paved the way for everything Damian now had.

She turned back toward her desk, composed again, chin high.

There was no more room for hesitation.

The next step would be careful. Quiet. Strategic. She needed more information. Needed to know how much Damian knew. Needed to uncover what else had been buried, and who helped cover it up.

But most of all, she needed to remember what brought her here.

Not the way he looked at her.

Not the quiet moments they accidentally shared.

Not the way he said her name when no one else was around.

Justice.

That was the promise she made.

To herself.

To her father.

To the family that had been torn apart while the Coles built their empire on the wreckage.

And nothing—not even the ghost of something she wished she could feel—would stop her now.