Then I got dressed.
Nina met me downstairs with a folder in one hand and a grim expression that usually meant good news for me and terrible news for someone else.
“Update,” she said as I slid into the back of the car. “The debt review uncovered two additional issues. Harrison leveraged his subsidiary shares against speculative property developments in Jersey and Miami.”
I flipped through the paperwork.
Bad numbers. Ugly numbers.
“How much exposure?”
“If everything unravels at once?”
She gave me a look.
“Roughly two hundred and forty million.”
I whistled softly. “Ambitious.”
“Also catastrophically stupid.”
“That too.”
She handed me another page.
“Mia?”
Nina nodded. “She tried to use one of the family cards this morning. Declined at a jewelry boutique. There was apparently… a scene.”
I almost smiled.
“Good.”
The car carried me downtown through a city that suddenly seemed sharper, cleaner, louder. Every building reflected light. Every intersection felt charged. There was something intoxicating about no longer living under someone else’s illusion.
At one o’clock, I walked into Oasis Group for the first time under my real name.
The lobby went silent.
Every eye followed me.
The receptionist half-rose from her chair. “Ms. Sinclair.”
I gave her a small nod and kept walking.
The boardroom was already full.
Not with swagger this time.
With fear.
The same directors who used to laugh at Harrison’s rehearsed confidence were now pale, stiff-backed, and desperate. The general counsel stood near the head of the table. Richard sat beside an open laptop. Julian lounged shamelessly by the windows like he’d arrived for live theater.
And Harrison—
Harrison stood at the far end of the room, looking as if he hadn’t slept in a year.
Our eyes met.
He took one step toward me.
“Iris—”
“Sit down,” I said.
He stopped.
Then, slowly, he sat.
I took the head chair.
His chair.
For a moment, no one spoke.
Then I folded my hands on the polished table and said, “Let’s discuss what happens to Oasis Group now that the fantasy is over.”
No one moved.
No one breathed.
The entire room seemed to tilt toward me.
For three years, I had stood in the shadows of that company, solving crises before they could reach him, feeding a machine that rewarded his face and ignored my hands.
Today, the shadows had a name.
And it was mine.
Richard activated the projection screen.
Debt structures. Exposure charts. Emergency liquidity options. Potential divestments.
As the data filled the room, Harrison’s expression changed from fear to disbelief to something almost worse—recognition.
He was finally seeing the full architecture of the empire I had built behind him.
Every line item he’d bragged about.
Every acquisition he’d taken credit for.
Every quarter he’d survived.
All of it threaded through my capital, my guarantees, my strategy, my labor.
His throat moved.
“You did all this?”
I didn’t even look at him. “No, Harrison. You did. Remember?”
A few board members shifted, embarrassed.
Good.
Let them feel it.