Chapter 3 - THE ANONYMOUS MESSAGE
I stared at the text until the letters blurred.
“Everything alright, Madam?” Thomas asked from the front seat.
“Yes, thank you,” I said quickly, turning the screen face down. “Merely business.”
But my heart had begun beating much faster. I read the message again. No signature. No number I recognized. The tone was not Victor’s. Margaret’s grammar was poorer, her anger less controlled. Someone else had sent this. Someone who knew things. Someone afraid of what I might uncover.
By the time I reached my penthouse apartment—my real home, the one Victor and Margaret never even knew existed—the news had already broken. Every financial channel ran the same headline: WHITMORE LOGISTICS ON THE BRINK AFTER SUDDEN TERMINATION OF MAJOR CONTRACTS. Photos of Victor leaving the Whitmore mansion were already circulating online, his face tight with stress, cameras flashing in his face.
My secretary, Clara, was waiting inside the moment I walked through the door. She took one look at my ruined dress and gasped.
“Elena! What on earth happened?”
“I will explain later,” I said, moving straight to the shower. “For now—please trace that message I forwarded to you. And Clara? Keep this quiet. If it is not Victor or Margaret sending threats… someone else is involved. Someone who knows my history.”
When I emerged, clean and dressed in soft dry clothes, Clara sat at the dining table surrounded by files. Her expression was grim.
“The message was sent through an anonymous server,” she reported. “Untraceable. But I went back through Whitmore Logistics records—old emails, deleted correspondence, internal memos. And Elena… things do not add up.”
She pushed a stack of papers toward me.
“Look at the dates. The very first Vale Dominion contract with Whitmore was signed two years ago—the week before your wedding. Victor claimed he secured it through weeks of brilliant negotiation. But according to these internal timestamps… the contract was pre‑approved before he even submitted his proposal. Someone at Vale Dominion—someone very high up—pushed it through specifically for him.”
I frowned. “That was me. I arranged it.”
Clara shook her head slowly. “No. Look at the authorization signature. It is not yours. It belongs to Julian Voss.”
I felt the blood drain from my face. Julian Voss was my late father’s oldest and most trusted business partner. Vice chairman of Vale Dominion. A man I had known since childhood. A man who had stood beside me at my father’s funeral and sworn to protect my interests above all else.
“Why would Julian authorize a contract for Victor before I even married him?” I whispered. “Victor and I were barely dating then. Julian knew nothing about him.”
“That is not all,” Clara said quietly. “Six months ago—right around the time Margaret began getting more aggressive with you—additional payments began flowing from Vale Dominion to Whitmore Logistics. Payments never authorized by you. Hidden in subsidiary ledgers, coded to look like routine reimbursements. Over two million dollars total.”
My stomach turned over. “Julian?”
“I cannot prove it yet,” Clara admitted. “But his digital signature appears on every transfer. Elena… did Victor know Julian? Before you introduced them?”
I tried to remember. Victor had always claimed he had never met anyone connected to Vale Dominion before that miraculous contract landed in his lap. But now… thinking back to certain conversations. The way Victor and Julian always seemed to exchange long, knowing glances whenever they were in the same room. The way Julian had encouraged me to marry Victor so quickly, saying he came from “solid stock.” The way Victor always seemed to know exactly what decisions I intended to make at work before I even announced them.
“Julian introduced us,” I whispered, the realization hitting me like a physical blow. “He set up that dinner. He told Victor exactly who I was and what I owned. And he told me Victor was a successful young businessman with a bright future. Neither of them told me they had already been meeting in secret.”
Clara leaned forward. “Which means Victor did not marry you by chance. He was steered toward you. And Julian Voss—your trusted vice chairman—may have been plotting with your husband from the very beginning.”
May you like
I stood up and walked to the window, staring out over the city lights. Two years. Two years I had been played. Julian had used Victor to gain influence over me, over Vale Dominion. Victor had married me at Julian’s urging, expecting to control me, bleed my company dry, and grow rich beyond measure. And Margaret… Margaret must have known none of this. She truly believed I was some penniless girl Victor had taken pity on. She had treated me terribly, yes—but she had been kept in the dark just as thoroughly as I had.
And the anonymous message? It came from someone who feared I would dig deeper. Someone who knew that canceling contracts was only the beginning. Someone who had far more to lose than Victor.
