THE CEO's REGRET

CHAPTER 15- WHAT VICTOR BUILT

There it was, the lie that ended everything, and whoever sent it clearly wanted me to know it had always been a lie.

I sat there staring at the screen until my eyes started to burn. The document was scarily good. The letterhead looked perfect, the numbers lined up exactly right, and the date stamp sat in just the right spot. If someone you trusted had handed this to you and said “look,” you would’ve believed every word, because it was built that way.

But it had my name on it, and I’ve signed my name ten thousand times in my life. The loop on the second letter was off, just a little. The tail on the last letter curved to the right, mine always swept left, without even thinking about it.

The pressure in the middle strokes was too steady and careful like someone had studied my signature once and tried really hard to copy it instead of just writing it the way you do when it’s yours.

Three tiny mistakes. Small enough that almost nobody would notice, I was noticing. I forwarded the whole thing to my lawyer at 10:47 with one short message: “Assess for forensic irregularities. I’ll call tomorrow.” She’d know what to do without me having to explain.

Then I leaned back in my chair, stared up at the ceiling for a long minute, and just breathed. I called Ethan, he picked up on the second ring. Something about how fast he answered told me he hadn’t been sleeping. He’d been waiting for this call, or one like it. The other shoe that had been hanging over us for years.

“Ms. Reed.”

“Tell me about the bank transfer,” I said.

The line went quiet. “How did you get that?” His voice had changed. All the easy, relaxed tone I’d gotten used to was gone. What was left sounded careful and still.

“ I got an anonymous email. Just the document, nothing else.” I kept my voice steady even though my heart was pounding. “Tell me everything, Ethan. All of it.”

He let out a slow breath, like he’d been holding onto this for a long time and it had finally gotten too heavy.

“It was Victor,” he said. “He had it made. I don’t know who did the actual work, someone who had access to financial templates and had seen your real signature somewhere. He showed it to Sebastian the night before the wedding.”

Ethan spoke slowly, each word landing with weight. “He told him you’d been approached months earlier and you’d taken the money, agreed to step away, and then changed your mind when Sebastian didn’t reach out.”

My fingers tightened around the phone until it hurt. “Sebastian believed it?”

“Not easily, not for long.” There was no hesitation in Ethan’s answer, like he’d gone over that night in his head more times than he could count. “But it was his father, and it was a document. Sebastian grew up being taught that people who got close to him always wanted something from the family. Victor knew exactly which button to push.” He paused. “He’d been pushing it for years.”

“How long did he believe it?”

“Less than twenty-four hours.” Ethan’s voice softened. “By the time the ceremony started, he already knew something was wrong. He told me, standing in that room right before the doors opened, he said he thought he’d made the worst mistake of his life and he didn’t know how to fix it.”

I closed my eyes, letting the words settle somewhere deep in my chest.

“I should have told him to walk out,” Ethan said quietly. “I didn’t. I told him to get through the day and figure it out later. I’ve never really forgiven myself for that.”

He wasn’t trying to sound dramatic. He just said it plain, and somehow that made it hit even harder. The apartment felt too quiet. Down the hall, Isla was fast asleep, completely unaware that the story of how she came to be was unfolding for her mother at eleven o’clock on a Wednesday night.

“Why did he go through with it?” I asked, my throat tight. “If he stopped believing it…”

“Because by the time he figured out the truth, you had already called and disappeared. You were unreachable, the room was full of people, and his father was standing two feet away.” Ethan’s voice dropped even lower. “And because he was only twenty-three. He’d spent his whole life being told what was expected of him. He hadn’t learned yet that sometimes you’re allowed to just… stop. Even when everything’s already moving. Even when people are watching.” He paused. “He knows now, it's just sixteen years too late.”

I looked back at the forged document glowing on my screen, that fake signature staring right back at me. “Who else had access to this?” I asked.

“Victor. Whoever made it. Maybe a few people inside the company back then.” Another pause, heavier this time. “Naomi… there’s something else.”

The way his tone shifted made me sit up a little straighter.

“Sebastian wasn’t the only one who saw that document.”

My breath caught in my throat.

“Your mother was shown it too.” His voice was gentle now, careful, like he was trying not to break something fragile. “Three weeks before you told Sebastian you were pregnant.”

Everything in the room went completely still.

My mother. The woman who had saved every one of those thirty-one letters in a shoebox, went to her grave without ever saying a single word about any of this.

“Naomi.” Ethan sounded far away. “Are you still there?”

I was here, I just didn’t have anything left to say.