Because here’s what Chloe never understood about the man she was trying to marry. She saw a distracted, grieving widower, consumed by corporate acquisitions, easy to manipulate over candlelight, too busy to see what was happening in his own home. She thought my distraction was a permanent weakness she could exploit.
She forgot that a man distracted enough to miss the abuse is also a man with the resources to end it completely once he sees it — thirty cameras, a head of security, an attorney on retainer, and the specific, focused fury of a father who has just watched someone terrorize his children.
The footage was everything. Psychological abuse of minors, documented. The assault on Sofia’s wrist. And the fabrication of theft to frame an innocent employee — which, depending on how far Chloe had taken it, potentially exposed her to charges of her own.
