The Extraction
The ride back to the penthouse was suffocatingly quiet.
Julie stared out the tinted window. The city lights blurred into streaks of gold and red.
Andrew sat beside her, rigid, staring straight ahead.
She finally broke the silence.
"Is it true?"
He didn't ask what she meant. He knew.
"Yes."
"You tried to pay my father off."
"I tried to save his life," Andrew corrected quietly. "He refused the money. He said the water table in three states was going to be poisoned if Origin wasn't exposed. He was right. And he was stubborn."
Julie closed her eyes. A tear slipped free, hot and angry.
"And when they killed him?"
"I spent the next eighteen months quietly consolidating enough power to tear the board apart from the inside," Andrew said. His voice was completely devoid of emotion, which somehow made it worse. "I needed leverage. I needed access to their personal accounts. I was three weeks away from pulling the trigger."
She turned to look at him.
"And then I showed up."
Andrew finally met her gaze.
The cold, assessing billionaire she had met in that glass office was gone. The man looking back at her looked exhausted.
"And then you showed up," he echoed softly. "Asking questions. Poking holes. Putting a target on your own back."
"So you married me."
"It was the only way to get you under my security umbrella without tipping them off. If I hired guards for you, they would know you were a threat. If I married you, they thought I was just keeping my asset close."
Julie looked down at the heavy diamond on her left hand.
"And Ethan?"
"Ethan was getting too close. Victor was going to have him killed." Andrew's jaw ticked. "I had him arrested on false charges because a holding cell is the safest place for him tonight. He'll be quietly released tomorrow morning, with a heavily funded offshore account to ensure he disappears."
She couldn't process it. The layers of manipulation. The sheer scale of the chessboard he had been playing on, while she had been moving like a pawn.
"What happens tomorrow?" she asked.
The car descended into the underground garage of their building.
The tires squeaked against the polished concrete.
"Tomorrow," Andrew said, unbuckling his seatbelt, "we burn Scott Enterprises to the ground."