Then he turned toward Richard.
“How many times?”
Richard laughed without humor.
“You cannot seriously be asking me to account for every childish scene she caused.”
Kyle took one step forward.
Olivia caught his wrist.
The movement surprised all three of them.
Kyle stopped immediately.
She felt the violence gathering in him, but she also felt him obey her touch.
He could have crossed the room before Richard took a breath.
Instead, he remained where she had asked him to remain.
“Don’t,” she whispered.
Richard smiled then.
It was small and poisonous.
“You see?” he said.
“She knows what you are.
She’s terrified you’ll kill me and prove every rumor about you true.”
Olivia released Kyle’s wrist.
“No,” she said.
Her father’s smile faltered.
She raised her head.
“I’m afraid he’ll hit you once, and you’ll use it to pretend you were the victim.”
Kyle’s gaze shifted to her.
Something passed between them in that moment—not trust yet, but recognition.
Olivia did not want rescue that replaced one violent man with another.
She wanted her father exposed in a way he could never rewrite.
Kyle understood.
He opened the door and spoke quietly to the guard outside.
Within minutes, the music downstairs stopped.
The remaining guests were escorted from the estate without explanation.
Every Fairfax driver was ordered to surrender his keys.
Richard’s phone was taken and sealed in an evidence bag by one of Kyle’s security men.
Richard watched the process with growing disbelief.
“You are destroying an alliance worth hundreds of millions over a domestic misunderstanding.”
Kyle looked back at him.
“The alliance was already dead.”
Richard gave a contemptuous laugh.
“You signed the contracts this morning.”
“I signed a marriage certificate.
The capital agreement was conditional.”
For the first time, fear touched Richard’s face.
Kyle crossed to a black cabinet beside the fireplace and opened it with a key from his pocket.
Inside sat a narrow leather folder.
He placed it on the table.
“I investigated your company before I agreed to the marriage,” he said.
“You told me Fairfax Shipping had a temporary liquidity problem.
What you actually have is forty-eight million dollars in concealed debt, three fraudulent insurance claims, and accounts opened under Olivia’s name without her informed consent.”
Olivia stared at him.
Richard’s mouth tightened.
“Ordinary business restructuring.”
“Forgery,” Kyle corrected.
“The documents carrying Olivia’s signature were executed on dates when she was outside Illinois.
My people confirmed the travel records yesterday.”
Richard looked at his daughter as though she had committed the crime.
“You gave him access to our files?”
“I didn’t even know the accounts existed,” Olivia said.
