Chapter 165: Chapter 167: Herold’s Reckoning
MARGARET ASHFORD’S POV
The intensive care unit at Mount Sinai Hospital was too bright, too sterile, too cold. Margaret Ashford sat in a chair beside her daughter’s bed, holding Victoria’s left hand....the only one that wasn’t wrapped in bandages and stabilized with metal pins.
The right hand was a mangled mess. The doctors had been blunt: extensive nerve damage, shattered metacarpal bones, severed tendons. They’d done emergency surgery to try to save function, but the prognosis wasn’t good. Victoria might never regain full use of that hand.
And the left wasn’t much better. The spike had gone clean through the palm, damaging the flexor tendons and median nerve. Which means that more surgery would have to be done.
Margaret looked at her daughter’s face....swollen, bruised, one eye completely shut from the beating she’d endured. Her jaw was wired shut from the fracture. Her nose had been reset but would never look the same.
Her beautiful daughter. Her perfect, polished Victoria who’d always been the jewel of society. Now she looked like she’d been in a war zone.
And the man responsible was walking free. Sleeping peacefully in his estate. Probably fucking that Chinese whore who’d stolen everything that should have belonged to Victoria.
"How could he be so ruthless?" Margaret sobbed, tears streaming down her face as she gripped Victoria’s good hand. "How can he do such a thing? My baby. My beautiful baby girl."
She looked up at her husband, who stood by the window like a statue, staring out at the New York skyline with an expression that gave nothing away.
"Is this how you are going to handle this whole thing? Just standing there and doing nothing?" Her voice rose, hysteria creeping in. "Look at what he did to my daughter! Your daughter! And all you do is just stand there and do nothing!"
She broke into fresh sobs, her entire body shaking. "I can’t take this. I can’t accept this, Harold. I can’t...."
Harold looked at his wife, said nothing for a long moment. Then, in a voice completely devoid of emotion, he said, "Let’s send her to Australia once she’s stable."
Margaret’s head snapped up. "What?!"
"Australia. We have offices there. She can...."
"You want to send her away?" Margaret stood, her voice reaching a pitch that made the heart rate monitor beep in alarm. "In this condition? What nonsense are you saying, Harold? What rubbish is coming out of your mouth? Don’t you dare touch my daughter! Don’t you dare, or else I’ll fight you to death!"
Her eyes looked wild, unhinged. Like a mother animal protecting her wounded young.
Harold sighed and moved to Victoria’s bedside. He looked down at his daughter....unconscious, broken, barely recognizable....and then at his wife.
When he spoke, his voice was very low but dangerous, as if he was being careful not to wake Victoria. But you could hear the suppressed anger beneath every word.
"Do you think I want this?" Each word was measured, controlled. "You think I want to let him go after what he did to my child?"
He closed his eyes, his jaw clenching. "But right now, I don’t have a choice. He has evidence that could make me declare bankruptcy. Could send me to federal prison. Could destroy everything I’ve built for years. So I can’t deal with him right now. Right now, my hands are tied."
He opened his eyes and looked at his wife. "He demanded that we send her out of the country. Which I have no other choice than to do right now."
Margaret stared at him like he’d slapped her. "So are you just going to let this go? Let him treat our daughter like this?" Her voice broke. "She didn’t do anything wrong. All she did was love him. And he was so cruel that he had to treat her like this."
She broke down completely, collapsing against her husband’s chest, her sobs echoing in the sterile room.
Harold held his crying wife, one hand stroking her back mechanically, but his eyes were on Victoria. On the bandages. On the machines. On the evidence of what Damien Blackwood had done.
Of course not, he thought coldly. I’m not going to swallow this insult. Never.
Damien Blackwood had dared to treat his daughter like this. Had dared to threaten him. Had dared to think Harold Ashford would just roll over and accept defeat.
They would settle the scores. And he would make sure the younger man paid....times ten....for what he’d done.
But not now. Not while Damien held all the cards.
No, Harold would wait. Would bide his time. Would find the right moment, the right weakness, the right leverage.
And then....then Damien Blackwood would learn what it meant to make an enemy of Harold Ashford.
He held his crying wife close, stroked Victoria’s hair with his free hand, and began to plan.
The hospital room was quiet except for the steady beep of monitors and Margaret’s occasional sobs. Harold had convinced her to sit down again, had promised that Victoria would be moved to a private facility once she was stable, had assured her that they would make this right.
All lies, of course. Or at least, partial truths.
Victoria would be sent to Australia. That part was true. Damien had made it very clear....if Victoria remained in New York, if she so much as stepped foot in the United States again, the full weight of Blackwood Legal would come down on the Ashford family.
And Harold couldn’t afford that. Not now. Not with so many financial irregularities that Marcus had somehow uncovered. The man was too good at his job....Harold had been so careful, had covered his tracks so well, and yet somehow Blackwood’s head of security had found things that could destroy him.
So yes, Victoria would go to Australia. Would recover there. Would be kept far away from New York and Damien Blackwood.
But that didn’t mean Harold was giving up.
He pulled out his phone and sent a carefully worded text to an old contact....someone he hadn’t spoken to in years but who owed him a favor.
I need information. Everything you can find on Aria Chen. Anything that could be used as leverage.
The response came within minutes: Understood. Give me two weeks.
Harold put his phone away and looked at his daughter again.
Two weeks. Two weeks to gather ammunition. To find weaknesses. To discover what skeletons Aria Chen had in her closet.
Because everyone had secrets. Everyone had things they didn’t want revealed.
And when Harold found hers, he’d use them to destroy her. To hurt Damien Blackwood in the way that would cause the most pain.
Not through business. Not through legal action. But through the one thing the man actually cared about.
Through Aria Chen.
Margaret had finally cried herself out and was dozing in the chair beside Victoria’s bed. Harold stood and moved to the window, looking out at the city he’d conquered once and would conquer again.
"You made a mistake, Blackwood," he murmured to his reflection in the glass. "You showed me your weakness. You let me see how much she means to you. And now....now I know exactly where to strike."
Behind him, Victoria moaned softly in her sleep, and Harold turned to look at his broken daughter.
This wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.
