RYAN POV
Ryan's hands were shaking so badly he could barely dial Trevor's number.
He was in the stairwell when he made the call. He couldn't go back to his office. Couldn't face anyone. Couldn't breathe in that boardroom where Sarah Mitchell had just sat down at his table like she owned it.
Because apparently, she did.
Trevor answered on the second ring.
"What the hell happened?" Ryan didn't wait for a greeting. His voice came out loud. Desperate. "How did this happen? How is she a co-owner? Why didn't you stop this?"
"Ryan, calm down. Let me explain—"
"Don't tell me to calm down. My company just got handed to my ex-wife. How am I supposed to be calm?"
"I tried to warn you," Trevor said. His voice was steady but there was something underneath it. Pity maybe. Or regret. "I told you to read page seven. I told you the infidelity clause was important. I told you to read the entire agreement before signing."
"I don't care what you told me. You should have stopped me. You're my lawyer. You should have physically stopped me from signing."
"I can't physically stop you from doing anything, Ryan. I can only advise you. And I advised you to read the documents. You refused."
Ryan was pacing now. Back and forth in the stairwell. His reflection caught in the metal door and he looked like a stranger. Wild eyes. Face gone pale. Someone who was falling apart.
"So what now?" Ryan asked. "What do we do? We fight it. We get it overturned. We prove that the clause wasn't valid or something."
"The clause is valid," Trevor said quietly. "I've reviewed the court ruling three times. The clause is enforceable. The evidence is ironclad. There's nothing to fight."
"There has to be something. There has to be a way."
"There isn't, Ryan. I'm sorry, but there isn't. Sarah had the evidence. The court reviewed it. The clause was triggered. She owns fifty percent of the company now and there's no legal way to change that."
Ryan felt something crack inside his chest.
"How did she get the evidence?" he asked. "How did she know?"
"She had you investigated," Trevor said. "She hired a private investigator before the divorce was finalized. She found out about the affair and she kept the information. She waited until now to invoke the clause."
Waited. She'd waited the entire time. While Ryan was celebrating his freedom. While he was building his empire. While he was posting about how happy he was with Amber. Sarah had been waiting. Preparing. Getting ready to destroy him.
"I want to sue her," Ryan said. "I want to take her to court. I want to—"
"Want to what?" Trevor interrupted. "Take her to court for what? She didn't break any laws. She used a clause that was in your own divorce agreement. A clause you didn't read. She presented evidence of your infidelity and the court ruled in her favor. Legally, she did everything right."
"This isn't right," Ryan said. His voice was breaking now. "This isn't fair. She can't just walk in and take my company. I built that company."
"You did," Trevor said. "And your wife helped you. And then you had an affair. And now she has leverage. That's how the law works, Ryan."
Ryan ended the call without responding. He couldn't listen to Trevor's reasonable voice anymore. Couldn't hear the pity. Couldn't accept that there was no way out of this.
He threw his phone against the concrete wall of the stairwell as hard as he could.
The screen cracked instantly. The phone clattered to the ground. It buzzed with notifications even as it lay broken on the step.
Ryan stared at it like it had betrayed him.
Everything was betraying him. Trevor had warned him and he'd ignored it. Sarah had been waiting and he'd walked right into it. The board had voted to accept her and he'd been powerless to stop it. His entire world had shifted in the time it took for Sarah to open a folder and present a strategic plan.
He picked up his broken phone and walked to the window at the top of the stairwell.
From here, he could see across the Seattle skyline. The city stretched out below him like something he could own if he wanted to. Buildings that he'd helped build. Streets that ran past his company headquarters. An empire that he'd spent seven years constructing.
And it was no longer entirely his.
Sarah Mitchell, the woman he'd cheated on and abandoned and dismissed, now owned half of it.
Ryan pressed his forehead against the cold glass and tried to understand how this had happened. How had he been so careless? How had he signed something without reading it? How had he been so sure that nothing in a divorce agreement could possibly matter?
Page seven. Trevor had said page seven. Ryan tried to remember if Trevor had actually warned him. Had he? Or had Ryan been too angry to listen?
He'd been so angry. Angry at Sarah for asking for a divorce. Angry at himself for cheating. Angry at the situation for forcing him to choose between his marriage and his freedom. So when Trevor had mentioned page seven, Ryan had waved him off without even hearing what he was saying.
He'd signed the papers with a pen that cost more than some people's monthly salary and he'd done it without reading them because he was too eager to be free from his wife.
Now that freedom was going to cost him half his company.
Ryan turned away from the window and looked at his broken phone. The screen was shattered but it was still buzzing with notifications. Texts probably. From Amber wondering where he was. From colleagues asking what was happening. From people who wanted to know if the rumors were true.
The rumors were true.
Sarah Mitchell was his co-owner now. Sarah Mitchell was on his board. Sarah Mitchell was about to have a say in everything he built.
He picked up the phone and the screen illuminated despite the cracks.
Three messages from his mother.
The first one was timestamped from ten minutes ago. Just a single line.
I heard what happened. Call me.
The second was from five minutes ago.
Don't do anything stupid. I'm handling this.
The third came through just as he was looking at the screen.
I'm on a flight to Seattle. I land in four hours. We're going to fix this. And we're going to make sure that woman understands exactly what it means to go up against a Wolfe.
Ryan's stomach dropped.
His mother was coming to Seattle. Victoria Wolfe. The woman who'd raised him to believe that weakness was death and power was everything. The woman who'd taught him that love was a liability. The woman who had never let anyone close enough to hurt her because she'd decided that being alone was safer than being vulnerable.
His mother was about to meet Sarah Mitchell and it wasn't going to be good.
Ryan looked at the time on his broken phone. Four hours. That's all he had before his mother arrived and started making things worse. Four hours before she started demanding that he remove Sarah from the company by any means necessary. Four hours before she told him that accepting a woman as equal was weakness.
He could already hear her voice in his head.
You built that empire. You earned it. You fought for it. You're not going to let some woman take what's yours.
That's what she would say. That's what she always said. That vulnerability was weakness. That relationships were distractions. That power was the only thing that mattered.
And Ryan had believed her. He'd built his entire life around her philosophy. He'd made himself into someone who could take what he wanted without feeling anything about it. Someone who could cheat on his wife and discard her and move on without looking back.
And it had cost him half his company.
Ryan walked down the stairs slowly. Each step felt heavier than the last. Like the weight of everything was finally catching up with him.
Sarah was probably still in the boardroom. Probably still presenting her brilliant strategy to the directors who were hanging on her every word. Probably enjoying the fact that she'd just destroyed the man who'd destroyed her.
He deserved it. That was the worst part. He knew he deserved it.
His phone buzzed again.
Another text from his mother.
We're going to destroy her. Don't worry. No one takes from Victoria Wolfe's son.
Ryan stared at those words for a long time.
Then he put the phone in his pocket and walked out of the stairwell.
He needed to go home. He needed to talk to Amber. He needed to figure out what he was going to say to his mother when she arrived in four hours ready for war.
But mostly he needed to come to terms with the fact that the one thing he'd always believed he could control, the one thing he'd built with his own hands, had just been taken from him by the woman he'd loved and then destroyed.
And he had absolutely no idea how to get it back.