I brought flowers and Paris flight tickets to the office to surprise my husband for Valentine's Day. But the whole company was celebrating his engagement to the female CEO

By that afternoon, the news of the SEC investigation hit the wire.

Halcyon Dynamics' stock went into a freefall, halting trading twice in three hours. The board of directors held an emergency vote and stripped Celeste Vale of her CEO title in a desperate bid to save the company’s reputation. But it was too late. The banks had already pulled their credit lines.

I spent the day at my father’s old workshop on the outskirts of the city.

It was a quiet, dusty place filled with blueprints, old prototypes, and the smell of machine oil and ozone. This was where my father had spent his final years, dreaming of clean energy solutions that the world wasn't ready for. I had saved his work from being auctioned off to greedy corporations.

Adrian had wanted to sell these patents to the highest bidder to fund his yachts and sports cars. He never cared about the science. He only cared about the status.

The bell above the workshop door chimed. I looked up to see Celeste Vale walking in.

She wasn't wearing her high-fashion designer suits today. She wore a simple trench coat, her hair tied back. She looked tired, but the sharp intelligence in her eyes was still there.

"Nice place," she said, looking around at the prototypes. "It's a long way from the penthouse."

"It's where the real work happened," I replied, wiping my hands with a towel. "Why are you here, Celeste? I thought your lawyers told you not to contact me."

"My lawyers are currently preparing my resignation package," she said, leaning against a wooden workbench. "I wanted to see the woman who managed to destroy my career in less than twelve hours."

"I didn't destroy your career," I said. "You did that when you decided to climb to the top using a married man's stolen ladder."

Celeste sighed, looking down. "He told me you two were separated for a year. He showed me forged separation papers. He was very convincing, Claire. He told me you were a simple girl from the suburbs who wanted a quiet life and a fat check to leave him alone. I was foolish to believe him, but I wanted the patents. I wanted what Halcyon had."

"The patents were never his to give," I said.

"I know that now," Celeste said, looking up at me with a strange expression. "He’s a parasite, Claire. He took your father’s genius, your money, and my reputation, and he used them to build a monument to his own ego. He's currently at a bar downtown, trying to find a lawyer who will work on contingency. No one will take his call."