Chapter 17
633 Words
Collateral Damage
It started with an envelope.
Plain. Cream-colored. Slid beneath Elias’s door like an afterthought.
He picked it up mid-conversation with Leona, half-distracted—until he saw the seal.
Not Vivienne’s. Not legal.
This was personal.
And inside: photos.
Grainy but unmistakable.
A much younger Elias in a dark hallway, shaking hands with a man whose face had been blacked out. A signature scrawled across a contract—his. And a date in the corner that made his stomach drop.
Three months before his marriage to Vivienne.
The note attached was typed, impersonal:
"Funny how secrets always find the light. – V."
Elias stared at the pictures, throat dry.
“Elias?” Leona’s voice was soft behind him. “What is it?”
He didn’t answer.
Because the truth?
He had no idea who had taken those photos.
Or why someone was bringing them back now.
Later, at the war room table, he finally handed her the envelope.
Leona took one look and went still. “Is this... real?”
Elias nodded slowly. “I was approached by one of Vivienne’s competitors. He wanted me to plant false numbers in her quarterly projections. I said no.”
She kept flipping. “Then what is this?”
“I almost said yes.”
Silence.
Leona blinked. “You were going to commit fraud—for what? Revenge?”
“Not revenge,” he said. “Freedom. I was trying to find a way out of the marriage without her destroying my family. But I couldn’t go through with it.”
Leona’s voice was cold. “But you considered it.”
“I didn’t do it.”
“But you didn’t tell me, either.”
He flinched.
Leona stood, setting the folder down like it burned her. “You’re fighting her with me now. But back then? You were ready to be her.”
“That’s not fair—”
“It’s not fair that I believed in you.”
The c***k between them was small. A hairline fracture. But it was real.
And growing.
Meanwhile, Vivienne moved like a ghost through the boardroom. Controlled. Deadly.
She didn’t need to scream.
She only needed to show the photo to one investor. One whisper in the right ear. And by sunset, Elias was under investigation for ethical misconduct.
His credibility? On life support.
The man who tried to save Leona’s clinic?
Now a liability.
By nightfall, Elias was holed up in the penthouse, hands braced against the counter.
He hadn’t called her.
Leona hadn’t called him either.
The line had gone quiet—and neither of them knew how to cross it again.
Leona spent the evening at the clinic’s locked front doors, sitting on the steps like a ghost haunting her own dream.
She remembered something Elias had said:
“You were never afraid of her. You were afraid of becoming her.”
And now she wasn’t sure where that line was anymore.
Not after leaking documents. Not after strategizing over someone else’s destruction.
Not after wondering if Elias was just another beautiful lie in a sharp suit.
That night, an anonymous message pinged Leona’s encrypted email.
An attachment.
Vivienne Thorne – Voice Recording – Timestamped: Three Weeks Ago.
She hesitated. Then hit play.
“We’ll use Elias to bait her. He’s in too deep now. He won’t walk away—not when he still thinks he can save her. Let him think he’s in control.”
Leona’s pulse spiked.
“And when the time comes, we’ll let him burn with her.”
She slammed the laptop shut, heart hammering.
Vivienne had planned it all.
The exposé. The leak. The voicemail. The photos.
She hadn’t lost control.
She’d orchestrated everything.
And Elias?
He was just another pawn.
Or worse—he still was.
- Writer
