Chapter 190: ~ 190
Chapter 190
~ Octavia ~
The city moved around me in a frantic, disjointed blur, but inside the limo, everything felt paralyzed. We drove through the dark arteries of Manhattan, the streetlights outside streaking into long, ghost-like ribbons of white and gold. I barely noticed the opulence of the interior or the hum of the engine; my mind was still trapped in that boardroom, replaying a single, chilling phrase.
"How is Frederick?"
Dorian Harrington hadn’t asked with the voice of a concerned friend. It was the tone of a man checking the status of a project. The more I deconstructed it, the less it felt like a coincidence. Frederick’s condition was a state secret. Franklin had insured that. Aside from the immediate family, the medical team, and the most trusted household staff like Clarence, no one knew the depth of the Senior Flemington’s trauma. Yet Dorian had spoken of it with such ease, as if he had been the one to tuck Frederick into that hospital bed himself.
I turned my head toward the tinted window, catching the faint, tired reflection of my own face. I looked like a woman who had aged a decade in a week. I was exhausted, suspicious, and beneath the armor of my pantsuit, I was terrified. I had ignored too many signs. The anonymous photos that had shattered my trust in Franklin; the "accident" at JeffTech; the kidnapping orchestrated by Anthony Rice. At the time, they felt like isolated tragedies—a string of bad luck.
Now? They felt like a symphony. A dark, perfectly conducted arrangement of misery.
My pulse quickened as I thought back to the day at JeffTech.
I remembered the frantic pressure to rework the project Bella had sabotaged. I remembered racing to the elevator, pressing the button repeatedly, and the strange, stubborn refusal of the doors to open. I had grown impatient, deciding to take the stairs. And then, the jolt. The sudden, violent force from behind that sent me spiraling into the dark. Anthony Rice had confirmed it during my captivity, but he hadn’t told me why it was so easy. It was as if I was steered toward those stairs.
I gripped my phone, my knuckles white. I needed to hear a voice I could trust. I dialed Dyson at the hospital.
"Mrs. Flemington," he answered instantly.
"How is Frederick?"
"Stable, ma’am. But no changes. He’s still deep under."
The relief was so sharp it made my shoulders ache as they dropped.
"And the security?"
"Tight. No one enters the room except the lead surgeon and the primary nurse. I’m checking IDs every single time, Octavia. We’re locked down."
"Good," I whispered. "Don’t let up. No one—no matter who they claim to be—gets near him without my express approval."
"You have my word," Dyson said.
I ended the call, but the unease remained. Frederick was safe, but the architecture of the plot against us was still standing. Franklin had known it. He had never stopped digging, even when I was treating him like an enemy. The private investigator’s voice returned to me like a haunting melody: "Mr. Flemington hired me before he disappeared."
Franklin had been hunting for the truth about the photos, about my fall, and about his own secretary. And now that he was gone, the baton had been passed to me.
The limo slowed to a crawl. "We are here, ma’am," Walter announced.
I looked out at a building that seemed to have been forgotten by time. It was an abandoned warehouse on the industrial edge of the city, a place where the shadows were thick and the salt air of the harbor tasted like rust. Walter opened the door, and I stepped out, followed closely by Locke and Holt.
My new bodyguards were a silent, lethal presence. They checked the perimeter, their eyes scanning the dark corners of the street before gesturing for me to move.
"Stay close, Mrs. Flemington," Locke commanded.
Inside, the air was heavy with the scent of dust and rot. Our footsteps echoed against the high ceilings until a voice emerged from the gloom.
"I wasn’t sure you would come."
A man stepped into a pool of dim light. Detective Tate looked exactly like his voice sounded—middle-aged, weary, and eyes that had seen too many secrets. He eyed my bodyguards with professional curiosity before turning to me.
"I need the answers my husband was looking for," I said firmly.
Tate studied me for a moment, then nodded. "He hired me to investigate the photos first. He was obsessed with proving he hadn’t betrayed you. He had no idea he’d been drugged that night at the resort, but he needed the digital trail to prove it."
"And the fall at JeffTech?" I whispered.
"He thought the circumstances were too convenient," Tate said, pulling a folder from his coat. "He was right. I managed to recover deleted footage from the JeffTech security server. You arrived early that morning, and miraculously, the elevator you always used was manually stalled for exactly thirty minutes."
I felt a cold chill race down my spine. "Stalled? By who?"
Tate pulled out a security still and handed it to me. It was a grainy image of the lobby, and standing by the maintenance panel was a woman I knew all too well.
"Bella Washington," I breathed.
"She was the inside woman," Tate explained. "We traced encrypted communications between her and Anthony Rice. She was feeding him your schedule, your movements, your every frustration. She ensured the elevator was out of commission so you would be forced into that stairwell."
My mouth went dry. Bella wasn’t just a rival for Franklin’s affection; she was a predator. "Why would she do it? She loved him—or she claimed to."
"Money, yes. But mostly loyalty. Not to Anthony, but to the man who signed Anthony’s checks."
"Dorian Harrington," I said, the name tasting like poison.
Tate nodded. "Dorian positioned Bella to watch you at JeffTech months ago. Anthony handled the ’execution’ of the tasks. It was a three-pronged attack: destroy the marriage with the photos, remove the wife with the accident, and then... when that failed, the kidnapping."
The pieces clicked together with terrifying precision. It was a scorched-earth policy designed to leave Franklin alone, broken, and vulnerable to a takeover. And then the plane crash...
"Franklin knew this?" I asked.
"He suspected Anthony was the leak. That’s why he reassigned me to follow him. He was trying to protect you, Octavia. He was fighting a war on two fronts—one at the office and one for your heart."
I felt a pang of intense, agonizing guilt. While I had been drowning in my own anger, Franklin had been playing a high-stakes game of chess to keep me alive.
Tate reached into his pocket and produced a small, silver flash drive. "This is everything. Financial trails, logs, the evidence linking Bella and Anthony directly to Harrington’s offshore accounts. It also contains the proof that the ’nude’ photos were a deep-fake composition sent by Anthony’s burner phone."
I took the drive with trembling fingers. It felt heavy—heavy with the weight of the truth. "I can expose them with this?"
"If you move carefully," Tate warned. "Dorian doesn’t play by the rules."
"Mrs. Flemington, we need to leave. Now," Locke’s voice cut in, sharp as a blade.
I turned to see him reaching for his holster. "What is it?"
"A black SUV just circled the block for the second time. They’re not looking for a parking spot."
Tate vanished back into the shadows without another word. "Go! Through the back!"
We scrambled into the limo, and Walter floored it. I looked out the rear window to see headlights swinging aggressively behind us.
"They’re tailing us,"
Locke reported.
Suddenly, a second car—a Cadillac I hadn’t noticed before—roared out from a side street, cutting off the pursuing SUV and forcing it onto the curb.
"Our backup," Holt noted, seeing my confusion. "Clarence doesn’t take chances."
The headlights of the mysterious car vanished in the distance as Walter took a series of sharp, tactical turns. I leaned back against the seat, my heart racing.
The scale of the war was finally clear. Dorian didn’t just want the Flemington Group; he wanted the Flemington legacy erased. He had used Bella and Anthony as his pawns, moving them across the board to isolate Franklin and me.
He had planned the whole damn thing. But he had made one mistake. He had left me alive, and now, I had the one thing he feared most.
The truth.
