I DUMPED MY FIANCE FOR HIS BILLONIA FRIEND

Chapter 35

The air felt heavy that night, as if the walls themselves were holding their breath.

Amara sat across from Damien at the dining table, the small silver flash drive between them like a live grenade. It looked so ordinary smooth, unmarked but she could feel the weight of it, the danger it carried.

Damien’s fingers rested lightly on the table. “Once we plug this in,” he said, his voice quiet but firm, “everything changes. You ready for that?”

Amara swallowed hard. “We already changed the moment Kieran sent that message.”

He nodded once, then inserted the drive into his laptop. The screen blinked, the cursor spinning for what felt like forever before a single file appeared.

VAULT_37.ENCRYPTED

Amara frowned. “Encrypted?”

“Of course,” Damien muttered, typing rapidly. “Cassandra was careful. She would’ve used a cipher something only someone close to her could break.”

He stopped, exhaled slowly, and tried again. The decryption bar crawled forward, painfully slow.

Finally, the file opened.

Inside were dozens of documents emails, spreadsheets, scanned letters and a folder labeled “PROJECT VAIL”. Damien clicked it open, and Amara leaned closer.

A company name flashed across the screen: Eastman Holdings x Kieran Group.

Her breath caught. “Kieran’s company?”

Damien’s jaw tightened. “Yeah. Cassandra told me she found double entries in their merger accounts. Money was moving in and out under fake names millions. And Kieran’s signature was all over it.”

Amara’s stomach twisted. “So she found out he was laundering money.”

“Yes,” Damien said grimly. “And that she wasn’t supposed to.”

He clicked another file a video recording. Cassandra appeared on screen, her expression tense, eyes darting as she spoke into the camera.

“If anything happens to me, this drive contains proof of where the money really went. Kieran isn’t working alone. Someone else inside Eastman is helping him cover it up,someone with access to internal records.”

She hesitated, biting her lip.

“Damien says he’ll protect me, but I’m not sure who I can trust anymore.”

The screen went black.

Amara’s heart hammered. “She mentioned your name.”

Damien shut his eyes briefly. “I tried to help her. I swear it. But before I could go to the authorities, she disappeared. Kieran made it look like she ran away.”

Amara wanted to believe him,but a question burned in her mind. “You said someone else was helping him. Do you know who?”

Damien looked at her, his eyes unreadable. “Not then.”

He turned back to the screen and opened one final document a list of transaction codes. Amara’s gaze caught on one of the names embedded in the data.

Her breath left her body.

A.M. Holdings.

“Wait,” she whispered. “Those are my initials.”

Damien stared at the screen, frowning. “That… can’t be right.”

But as he scrolled, more appeared,references to a trust fund under her late father’s company name, old signatures she vaguely recognized from legal papers she’d signed years ago.

“No,” Amara said, standing abruptly. “This,this isn’t possible.”

Damien’s voice was calm, but the edge in it was unmistakable. “Kieran used your family’s dormant company to move the funds. It’s why he wanted you close. Why he encouraged your engagement to him in the first place.”

Her knees felt weak. “He used me…”

“Used you to clean his money,” Damien finished. “You were the perfect cover.”

Amara’s vision blurred, a storm of fury and disbelief tearing through her.

All this time, she’d thought she had left betrayal behind,but the truth was, she’d been part of it all along, without even knowing.

“What do we do now?” she whispered.

Damien closed the laptop gently. “Now,” he said, “we make sure Kieran never gets the chance to finish what he started.”

But even as he said it, Amara couldn’t shake the feeling that they’d just crossed into something far darker and that the real danger hadn’t even begun yet.