I faked a devastating spinal injury, sat helplessly in a wheelchair, and listened as my own fiancée humiliated me in front of everyone I trusted. “Look at you,” Victoria sneered, loud enough for the ballroom to hear. “You’re nothing now—just a useless cripple.” She had no idea I could stand up at any moment.

Three days later. The interrogation wing of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

I sat behind a one-way mirror, watching Marcus Brody.

He was wearing an orange prison jumpsuit. The charismatic, handsome playboy who used to spend weekends on my yacht was gone. His eyes were bloodshot, his hair unwashed, his posture slouched in total defeat.

Beside me stood Federal Prosecutor Sarah Jenkins.

"He's been talking for six hours straight, Mr. Sterling," Prosecutor Jenkins said, flipping through a thick dossier. "Once Marcus realized Arthur was trying to pin the entire brake-line tampering on him, he sang like a canary."

"What else did he give you?" I asked.

"More than we expected," she replied. "It wasn't just your company they were trying to steal. Arthur and Marcus were running an offshore money-laundering ring using Sterling Logistics shipping routes. They've been smuggling unregistered medical supplies and illegal weapons through our European ports for over five years."

I narrowed my eyes. "My father suspected something was wrong with the European division before he died."

"Your father was right," Jenkins said softly. "In fact... Marcus just admitted something else twenty minutes ago."

I turned my head to look at her. "What?"

"The car crash that killed your father four years ago," Jenkins said, her voice dropping. "It wasn't an engine failure, Julian. It was orchestrated by Arthur."

A cold, deadly fury ignited in my chest. The room seemed to lose all air.

I didn't say a word. I simply turned and walked out of the observation room, pushing through the door into the interrogation chamber.

Marcus jumped when the door slammed open. He looked up, his eyes widening in terror as I walked toward him.

"Julian! Julian, I swear to God, I told them everything!" Marcus stammered, leaning back in his chair as far as the handcuffs would allow. "I told them Arthur was the mastermind! I just executed the orders!"

I stood across the stainless steel table, leaning down until my face was inches from his.

"My father trusted you like a son, Marcus," I whispered, my voice dripping with lethal quietness. "I treated you like a brother."

"Julian, please... Arthur threatened my family! I had no choice!"

"You had a choice every single day," I said. "When you tampered with my car, when you gave me that drug, when you slept with my fiancée in my own house while I was lying in a hospital bed."

Marcus began to sob uncontrollably, his shoulders shaking. "What are they going to do to me?"

"You're going to prison for attempted murder, high treason, and federal racketeering," I told him, standing up straight. "You will be seventy years old when you see the outside of a prison cell again. And every single day you spend in there, you will know that I am out here, holding everything you tried to steal from me."

I turned and walked to the door.