The Groom Who Ruined Me

Chapter 7

The transition from a broken captive to a secret operative changed everything about how Clara walked through the halls of Sinclair Enterprises the next morning. She no longer kept her eyes dropped to the floor. Instead, she watched every face, every badge, and every nervous glance from the corporate staff.

She was looking for a ghost. An inside asset with CEO-level encryption access.

By noon, Clara sat at her small desk outside Alec’s glass office, typing up a fresh set of logistics logs. She was waiting for the internal employee directories to finish syncing to her terminal using the secure bypass codes Alec had quietly loaded onto her system before his morning board meeting.

"Here are the updated financial statements for the Q3 audit, Mrs. Sinclair."

Clara looked up from her screen. Standing across from her desk was a middle-aged man with thinning gray hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and a kind, familiar face that instantly caused a lump to form in her throat.

"Uncle Marcus?" Clara breathed, the old family nickname slipping out before she could stop it.

Marcus Vance—no relation to Julian Vance, despite the shared last name—had been her father’s chief operating officer at Hastings Logistics for over a decade. He was the man who had taught Clara how to ride a bicycle when her father was too busy with board meetings. When Hastings Logistics collapsed, Marcus had been picked up by Sinclair Enterprises as a senior financial consultant. Clara had assumed Alec hired him just to strip away the last remaining pieces of her father’s talent pool.

Marcus offered her a small, sad, and deeply sympathetic smile. He glanced toward Alec’s empty office before leaning down over her desk, lowering his voice to a protective whisper. "Clara... my heart broke when I heard about the marriage. What that monster is doing to you, forcing you to work here like a common servant... your father would be devastated if he knew."

A wave of genuine emotion washed over Clara. For a split second, she wanted to throw her arms around him and tell him everything. "I’m surviving, Marcus. I’m just trying to keep my family afloat."

Marcus squeezed her hand gently, his eyes scanning the paperwork on her desk. "If you ever need a way out, Clara, you let me know. I still have access to some of your father's old encrypted shipping files. If we can find the missing ledger before Sinclair's legal team does, we might be able to get your father out of that medical prison Alec locked him in."

Clara froze. Every muscle in her body locked up.

The missing ledger.

Alec had told her about the offline ledger last night in the VIP lounge. It was a secret known only to her father, herself, and... the person who had set the trap.

Clara looked down at Marcus's hand resting on hers. Then, her gaze drifted to the employee directory that had finally finished loading on her computer monitor. The screen displayed the internal system routing tags for the finance sector.

User Account: SE_FIN_CHIEF_01

Registered to: Marcus Vance, Senior Financial Consultant.

The room seemed to lose all its oxygen. The kind, grandfatherly man who had given her birthday gifts and watched her grow up wasn't a victim of the collapse. He was the executioner. He was the inside asset who had stolen the fifty million dollars from Alec, used her father's terminal as a shield, and funneled the wealth straight into Julian Vance's tech sector.

And right now, he was testing her. He was trying to see if she knew where the offline ledger was hidden.

"Clara?" Marcus asked, his wire-rimmed glasses catching the harsh fluorescent light of the ceiling. His smile remained warm, but his eyes were suddenly cold, sharp, and calculating. "Is everything alright? You look pale."

Before Clara could give away her panic, the private executive elevator dinged.

The heavy glass doors of the CEO suite slid open, and Alec stepped out. He was flanked by three security guards, his charcoal wool coat billowing behind him as he marched down the corridor. The moment his stormy gray eyes caught Marcus leaning over Clara’s desk, an aura of pure, unadulterated danger radiated off him.

"Marcus," Alec barked, his voice booming through the quiet suite like thunder. "What are you doing at my wife’s desk?"

Marcus immediately stepped back, his posture shifting from predatory to submissive in a fraction of a second. He bowed his head slightly. "Just delivering the Q3 financial statements, Mr. Sinclair. I was merely offering my condolences to Mrs. Sinclair regarding her father’s health."

Alec walked directly into Marcus's space, using his towering height to force the older man to retreat a step. "My wife’s family is my concern, not yours. Your job is to balance the logistics ledger, not to socialize. Take your files and get off the executive floor before I have security revoke your clearance."

"Of course, sir. Forgive the intrusion," Marcus said smoothly. He cast one final, lingering look at Clara—a look that felt less like comfort and more like a silent warning—before turning and walking back toward the elevator.

The moment the elevator doors closed behind Marcus, the tension in the room snapped. Clara slumped back into her chair, her breathing shallow and ragged, her hands shaking violently against the armrests.

Alec didn't waste a moment. He stepped behind her desk, slammed his hand down on the lock button of her computer terminal, and looked down at her with intense, burning focus. "What did he say to you?"

"It’s him, Alec," Clara whispered, looking up at him with wide, horrified eyes. "It’s Marcus. He was my father’s best friend. He’s the one who authorized the fifty-million-dollar transfer using your office credentials. He just asked me about the offline ledger."

Alec’s jaw tightened so hard a muscle strove against his skin. He didn't look surprised; he looked lethal. He reached down, grabbing her shaking hands and pulling her gently but firmly out of her chair, drawing her into the privacy of his glass office. He closed the heavy door, shutting out the rest of the world.

"He’s fishing," Alec said, his voice a low, steady anchor against her panic. His large hands remained wrapped around her wrists, warming her cold skin. "He knows the net is closing in. Julian Vance is putting pressure on him to secure that ledger before we find it."

"He looked me dead in the eye and pretended to care about my father," Clara said, a single, angry tear slipping down her cheek. "I trusted him my entire life. He ruined us, Alec. He ruined everything."

Alec looked down at her, his stormy gray eyes softening with a rare, raw emotion. Slowly, he raised one hand from her wrist, his thumb gently catching the tear on her cheek, wiping it away with surprising tenderness.

"He didn't ruin you, Clara," Alec murmured, his voice dangerously low, his face inches from hers. "Because you are going to be the one who takes him down. We have the confirmation we need. Now, we feed him the bait."

Clara looked up into his fierce, protective gaze, her heart beating a frantic, erratic rhythm that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the man holding her. "What bait?"

Alec’s eyes darkened, a brilliant, ruthless smirk playing on his lips. "Tonight, you are going to tell Marcus exactly where that ledger is hidden. And we are going to catch him and Julian Vance red-handed."