“I let her control too much for too long.”

“She is a powerful woman, Blake,” I said, stopping a few feet from him.

“She built a fortress around you.”

“A prison,” he corrected.

He walked over to the window and looked out at the gray city below.

“But it’s over now. She has no power in the company.”

My phone vibrated again in my hand, a sharp, double buzz.

I looked down at the screen.

It was an email notification from an unknown sender.

The subject line was blank, but there was an attachment.

“Blake,” I said, my chest tightening.

He turned around, noticing the change in my tone.

“What is it?”

I tapped the screen and opened the attachment.

It was a draft of a press release, but not from Harrington Industries.

It was formatted for a major tabloid outlet.

The headline read: “The Hidden Heir Scheme: How an Ambitious Scientist Used Secret Children to Extort a Billionaire.”

I read the first few lines aloud, my voice faltering.

“Sources close to the Harrington family reveal that Emma Winters hid her three sons for a decade, using them as leverage for a multi-million dollar settlement.”