anwhile, Kathrine walked out of Glorious International and slid into her car. She closed the door, but she did not start the engine.
Instead, she sat there, motionless, her hands resting on the steering wheel as her mind replayed everything that had happened inside.
The anger had already begun to ebb, leaving behind sothing far more unsettling.
Clarity.
She might have warned Daniel out of spite, driven by days of bottled resentnt and instinctive protectiveness over her sister. But deep down, she knew one undeniable truth.
Daniel would never hurt Anna.
If that had been his intention, he would have done it long ago. He was not a man who hesitated when he truly wanted destruction.
And that was never her real concern.
What haunted her was the why.
Why was Daniel so determined to destroy her father? Why was he targeting the Bennetts with such precision? And why had he not denied it when she confronted him?
That silence had spoken louder than any confession.
Kathrine exhaled slowly and leaned back, staring through the windshield without seeing the city beyond it.
She had done her howork long before today.
She had dug through every person who had ever crossed paths with Hugo Bennett. Every rival. Every disgruntled partner. Every failed competitor. She knew their nas, their motives, their limits.
Most of them wanted to bring the Bennetts down. So even tried.
All of them failed.
And the reason was always the sa.
Daniel.
The man whose background was a carefully sealed void. The man whose rise had been swift, almost unnatural. Whose influence reached places no ordinary businessman could touch.
He was not just powerful. He was untouchable.
Kathrine tightened her grip on the steering wheel.
Daniel was the shield that had kept her family standing for a while now. And yet, paradoxically, he was also the blade now aid at their throat.
That contradiction gnawed at her.
If Daniel truly wanted the Bennetts destroyed, nothing would have stopped him by now. No market forces. No legal barriers. No alliances.
Yet he waited. He calculated.
And worse, he seed to be fighting sothing within himself.
Kathrine closed her eyes briefly.
There was a history there. One far deeper than business rivalry. Sothing buried so well that even her extensive digging had failed to uncover it.
And that terrified her more than open hostility ever could.
She opened her eyes, resolve hardening.
If Daniel would not give her the answers, she would find them herself. Because whatever past tied him to her father was powerful enough to shape the present. Powerful enough to threaten her family.
And powerful enough to make a man like Daniel hesitate.
Kathrine finally started the car, pulling out of the lot with a single thought echoing in her mind.
The truth was out there. And she intended to uncover it, no matter what it cost.
***
Enjoy your victory while it lasts. Because when the truth resurfaces and it will you won’t even see the knife coming.
Ester’s words echoed relentlessly in Roseline’s mind, each repetition sharper than the last. No matter how much she tried to dismiss them, they refused to fade. She had replayed that mont countless tis, analyzing Ester’s tone, her expression, the certainty in her eyes.
Roseline paced the length of the room, her heels clicking softly against the marble floor. She hated this feeling. Restlessness was not sothing she allowed herself. Uncertainty even less.
She had tried to tell herself that Ester was bluffing. That she was grasping at shadows, hoping fear would do what evidence could not. But Ester had not sounded desperate.
She had sounded sure.
Roseline stopped near the window, folding her arms tightly across her chest.
Her lies were buried. Sealed. Protected. She had made sure of that long ago. They were ant to die with her, never to be unearthed by anyone foolish enough to go digging.
And yet, Ester’s confidence had shaken her.
A woman with nothing left to lose did not issue empty threats.
"Unless..." Roseline whispered under her breath, her jaw tightening.
She shook her head sharply, as if physically rejecting the thought.
"No," she muttered. "No. Apart from Collin, no one knows anything."
Her fingers curled into fists.
"And Kathrine," she added firmly, more to convince herself than anything else, "I made sure her mories were erased forever."
The mory resurfaced unbidden.
Kathrine after the kidnapping had been a shell of who she once was. Nightmares. Panic attacks. Long, hollow stares that made even hardened doctors uneasy. The trauma had been deep, festering, consuming her from the inside.
Roseline could still recall the way Hugo’s composure had cracked back then. The powerful man reduced to helplessness as he watched his daughter unravel.
It had been Roseline who stepped in.
She had been the calm voice in the chaos. The concerned partner. The one who gently suggested that Kathrine needed professional help. Psychiatric care. Sothing more than ti and reassurance.
"She’s reliving it over and over again," Roseline had told him softly. "This kind of trauma doesn’t fade on its own, Hugo. If you truly want to help her heal, you need to let the doctors intervene."
Hugo had resisted at first. Of course he had. But exhaustion and fear had a way of eroding even the strongest resolve.
And when the doctors suggested mory suppression, erasing the most damaged fragnts of Kathrine’s recollection to give her a chance at normalcy, Hugo had agreed.
He had trusted them.
He had trusted Roseline.
The procedure had been presented as a rcy. A way to save Kathrine from drowning in a past too horrific to carry.
And Roseline had made sure it worked.
Kathrine had forgotten the details. The faces. The voices. The fear that tied everything together. What remained was a hollow gap, dismissed as a blur of trauma her mind could not retain.
Roseline exhaled slowly, grounding herself.
Kathrine could not rember. Collin would never speak. And the rest of the trail had been wiped clean long ago.
So why did Ester’s words feel like a crack in solid ground?
Roseline’s gaze hardened as she stared at her reflection in the glass. The woman looking back at her appeared composed, unshaken, just as she always presented herself to the world. Yet the longer she held that gaze, the harder it beca to ignore the unease creeping beneath the surface.
How could she dismiss it so easily?
Kathrine’s behavior had changed. Subtly, but unmistakably.
The way her eyes lingered a fraction too long. The careful pauses before she spoke. The sharpness hidden beneath polite conversation. It was not accusation, not yet, but it was awareness.
Kathrine had been watching her.
And that unsettled Roseline more than Ester’s words ever could.
She folded her arms slowly, her reflection mirroring the motion with unsettling precision.
"Am I being too ignorant?" Roseline whispered.
The room offered no answer. The silence pressed in, thick and oppressive, amplifying the question she did not want to face.
Ignorance had never been her flaw. If anything, she had survived because she anticipated threats long before they surfaced. Yet now, she had chosen to dismiss signs she would have once dissected rcilessly.
Because acknowledging them ant accepting a possibility she had sworn was impossible.
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