Chloe’s hands curled into fists, jealousy burning through her chest.
Has Sebastian lost his mind?
However she’d tried to spin it, he’d sided with Ivy anyway practically recruiting a discarded wife in front of everyone.
Ivy didn’t dignify it with a reaction.
“Mr.
Barrow, is there anything else outstanding on the contract?”
Sebastian crossed to her with a smile, leaning in with a tone that landed just short of appropriate.
“Sign on with Barrow Group, and I’ll finalize this right now.”
“I appreciate the offer, Mr.
Barrow,” Ivy declined without missing a beat, expression unchanged.
“But I’m planning to leave the city, so I’m afraid I won’t be able to take you up on it.”
The room reacted in a dozen different ways at once.
Sebastian arched an eyebrow.
“Fair enough.
I can wait.”
He didn’t push it further, and the signing went through cleanly.
He even had Amy walk them out personally.
It wasn’t until they were back at Wolfe Jewels, contract handed off to legal, that the whole team finally exhaled.
Back in the design department, Hazel was already pushing for a celebration.
Chloe, unable to stomach the sight of everyone fawning over Ivy, turned to leave.
Ivy shut the door instead.
“The contract’s settled.
Now we settle the other matter, the mole.”
Chloe rounded on her, furious.
“Director Hart, is this just payback dressed up as an investigation?
I’ll say it again, I never leaked those files.”
Gregory spoke up, placating.
“Ivy, let it go.
Secretary Bennett was personally placed here by Nathaniel and since the company didn’t actually lose money in the end, there’s no reason to push this further.”
Naomi Clarke cut in, indignant.
“Professor Shaw, she’s your own student!
The rightful Mrs.
Wolfe, no less.
Whatever this is, publicly or privately, Chloe shouldn’t get a pass just because of who she’s sleeping with!”
A chorus of agreement rose around the room.
Chloe went red with fury, momentarily speechless.
“A room full of idiots.
I’m taking this straight to Nathaniel.”
Ivy spoke up, quiet and deliberate.
“Professor Shaw beyond the money, what else did Desmond promise you?
A director title?
Vice president, maybe?”
The room went dead silent, every smile vanishing at once.
Naomi’s face twisted with shock and anger.
“Ivy, do you have any decency left?
He’s stood by you this entire time, and you’re too much of a coward to actually confront Chloe, so you’re dragging our own mentor into it instead?
That’s disgusting.”
Gregory snapped, “Naomi.
You do not speak to the director like that.”
His face settled back into calm.
“Ivy have I done something to make you think this of me?”
Ivy dropped a folder of printed evidence in front of him and pulled up parking garage footage on her tablet.
“Your communication logs with Desmond’s assistant show contact right after we finished the final mockups.
You went down to the parking garage first.
Half an hour later, his assistant shows up on camera, lingers near your car for several minutes, then leaves.”
Gregory’s brow furrowed.
“I was working late and went to grab a jacket from my car.
I don’t know Desmond’s assistant.
If anyone was meeting him down there, it was probably Chloe.”
Chloe snapped back, “That’s absurd.
I never touched those files.”
The room, still loyal to Gregory, closed ranks instantly.
“Director, you can’t pin this on him just because he’s the easy target.
The footage never actually shows anyone taking anything.
You’re building a story out of a coincidence.”
Gregory’s tone turned sorrowful.
“Ivy, I know I said some harsh things that first day, when I thought you’d betrayed the team.
I understand if that hurts you.”
Ivy studied the practiced grief on his face, then opened a separate file, his private financial records, and inside it, a candid photo.
The image showed Gregory in the middle of an unmistakably intimate moment with a much younger woman.
“You covered your tracks well.
Even routed the payout through an account in her name.”
“If we hadn’t dug into the affair, no one would have ever connected the two of you.”
Gregory’s composure cracked.
He snatched the photo and tore it apart.
“You had me investigated.”
The sheer force of that reaction was as good as a confession.
The room went silent, everyone visibly recalculating.
Their steady, reasonable mentor, the man who’d built a reputation as the perfect husband secretly keeping a mistress, selling out the company, and pinning the blame on someone else?
Chloe, catching up to what was actually happening, snapped, “You absolute hypocrite, trying to drag me into your mess!”
Gregory didn’t even look at her.
Naomi, close with Gregory’s family for years, stared at him like she didn’t recognize him anymore.
“How could you do this to your wife?
To your kids?
Why would you sell out this company?”
Gregory’s face twisted into a sneer, and he swept the folder off the table entirely.
“Because this company never deserved my loyalty in the first place.
If Wren hadn’t parachuted in over my head, someone with my experience would have made director years ago.
I am done being managed by a girl half my age.”
“I finally got rid of her, and Nathaniel just replaced one mistress with another and dropped her straight into my department.
Is this what design has become a dumping ground for his conquests?
I’m done.
Desmond offered me something fair.
Why shouldn’t I take it?”
Naomi looked at him like a stranger.
“If you were unhappy, you could have resigned.
Walk out with your head held high.
What you actually did is a crime.”
Hazel, aching for Ivy, turned on him.
“For three years, Director Hart has produced one brilliant design after another, sat through every dinner, fought through every negotiation, and personally landed every major account this department has.
She built this department’s entire reputation.
How dare you erase all of that with nothing but ‘she’s young’ and ‘she got here through marriage’.”
Gregory sneered.
“If she weren’t Mrs.
Wolfe, none of those clients would have”
Give a girl like her a second look.
Ivy stayed quiet, studying him.
Pretending this didn’t sting would be a lie.
She’d never actually been the designer Wren was supposed to be.
She’d walked into this job knowing nothing, terrified every single day of being exposed.
Gregory’s patience, his mentorship all of it had meant something real to her.
She’d trusted him.
“If being Mrs.
Wolfe really opened every door, why would I have had to beg Sebastian Barrow the way I did?” Ivy wasn’t interested in arguing the point further.
Whatever Gregory actually wanted, it was never the truth, just a story where he got to play the victim while he rewrote his own crimes as grievances.
She told Hazel to call the police, voice flat.
“Gregory.
You broke the law.
Save the resentment for the fraud investigators.”
“Don’t call them!” Gregory hadn’t expected her to go this far, his expression collapsing into something closer to grief.
“Ivy I was confused, I made a mistake.
It started because I couldn’t stomach how Chloe was carrying on with Nathaniel, and I wanted to protect you”
Chloe shoved him hard.
“Excuse me?
Carrying on?”
Gregory smashed a vase against the corner of the desk, hands tearing open on the shards, face twisted with pain.
“Do you really have to be this cold to me?”
“You broke the law knowingly.
There’s nothing left for me to do.” Ivy couldn’t watch this any longer and turned to leave.
Gregory lunged, sudden and unhinged, a jagged piece of broken porcelain gripped in his bleeding hand, aimed straight at her throat.
“I’ll take you down with me!
You’re the reason I became this!”
Ivy’s expression shifted and she threw her arm up to block him but someone shoved her hard from behind.
Her face slammed straight into the shard in Gregory’s hand