Chapter 5
Victoria did not go down quietly; she immediately launched a vicious, highly funded counter-attack in the press. She appeared on a prominent national morning show, wearing a modest, conservative dress and wiping away perfectly timed, fake tears. She spun a tragic tale of a wealthy, paranoid groom who had suffered a psychological break at the altar.
"Julian is unwell, and my only concern is for poor little Lily, who is trapped in his erratic custody," Victoria told the sympathetic host. "I was a mother to that little girl, and he tore us apart without a single explanation." Millions of Americans watched the broadcast, turning the tide of public opinion heavily against the silent, reclusive billionaire.
Julian’s board of directors panicked, flooding his phone with demands for a public statement or his immediate resignation as CEO. They feared the scandal would tank the stock prices right before their most crucial product launch of the decade. Julian ignored every single call, focusing entirely on painting a massive puzzle with Lily on the living room floor.
"Daddy, the lady on the TV is lying," Lily said softly, placing a blue puzzle piece into the cardboard sky. "Why is she pretending to be sad?" "Because bad people often pretend to be victims when they get caught, Lily," Julian explained, handing her another piece. "But we aren't going to fight her on television; we are going to fight her where it actually matters."
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Vance walked into the room, holding a encrypted flash drive wrapped in a secure evidence bag. "We found the nanny she fired three months ago, the one who supposedly stole silver from the estate," Vance reported. "Turns out, Victoria paid her off to disappear, but the nanny kept receipts of every illegal wire transfer."
Julian smiled for the first time in days, taking the flash drive from his security chief. Victoria had played a brilliant public relations game, weaponizing the media to paint herself as a saint. But she had left a trail of financial breadcrumbs, and Julian was about to follow them right to her destruction.
