The silence that blanketed the luxury VIP suite felt heavier than lead.

I stared at Adrian, the words echoing meaninglessly inside my spinning head. His own board of directors?

“I don't understand,” I stammered, shaking my head as Lily happily babbled on the carpet, hugging the oversized teddy bear Marcus had handed her. “What does a billionaire tech board have to do with me? I’m a nobody. I lived a quiet life in Monterrey until my marriage imploded three weeks ago. I’ve never even met anyone from the Prescott Group!”

Adrian stood up, walking slowly toward the floor-to-ceiling glass wall that overlooked the bustling tarmac below. His hands were buried deep in the pockets of his slacks, his broad shoulders tense under his white button-down shirt.

“You haven't met them, Elena, but they know exactly who you are—or rather, they know whose blood runs in your veins,” Adrian said, his voice cold and detached, as if reciting a death sentence.

My heart skipped a beat. Whose blood runs in my veins?

“My father was a high school history teacher in Guadalajara,” I said defensively, my voice rising. “My mother worked in a local pharmacy. My family doesn't have secrets, and we certainly don't have corporate empires!”

“That’s what your mother told the adoption agency thirty years ago,” Adrian turned around, his dark eyes burning with an intense, complicated mixture of anger and protective sorrow. He walked back toward the coffee table and tapped the encrypted tablet, spinning it around so the screen faced me.

Displayed on the high-resolution screen was an old, faded genealogical tree, alongside birth certificates, classified legal affidavits, and financial trust documents bearing red stamps marked CONFIDENTIAL - PRESCOTT HOLDINGS.

At the top of the tree sat Arthur Prescott—Adrian’s late grandfather and the original founder of the entire conglomerate.

And branching off from a secondary, legally sealed lineage dated back to 1995 was a name I had never seen before: Elena Morales (née Silva).

“My mother’s maiden name was Silva,” I whispered, my fingers trembling as I reached out to touch the glass of the tablet. “She... she never talked about her family. She said they died in a car accident when she was a teenager.”

“They didn't die in an accident, Elena,” Adrian said quietly, pulling up a chair and sitting directly across from me, his knees almost touching mine. “Your grandfather, Arthur, had a second family—one he kept hidden from the public eye to protect the company's initial public offering in the nineties. When he passed away, his estate was divided among direct legal heirs. But due to an ironclad codicil in the original trust, a massive controlling share of Prescott Group voting stock was quietly sequestered, waiting for an unclaimed blood relative from that secondary branch to surface.”

The room seemed to spin. I grabbed the edge of the coffee table to steady myself.

“Stock? Voting shares? Are you saying... I own a part of your company?”

“Not just a part,” Adrian corrected grimly. “You hold nearly twelve percent of the voting shares. In the wrong hands—or the right corporate takeover—that block of shares is enough to strip me of my CEO position and completely dismantle everything my family built.”

The pieces of the puzzle slammed together with terrifying violence.

The board of directors didn't care about me as a person. To them, I was a loose end—a missing heir who had suddenly popped up on their radar after living an obscure, quiet life in Mexico. If they could quietly intimidate me, discredit me, or lock me away in some legal labyrinth before I ever realized what I owned, they could seize control of my inheritance and cement their own permanent power over the Prescott empire.

And Ethan... sweet, selfish, clueless Ethan. My sudden, disastrous marriage to him wasn't an accident either.

“Oh, God,” I choked out, a wave of nausea washing over me as the dark realization hit home. “Ethan didn't just fall out of love with me. He didn't just randomly decide to lock me out of our accounts and post pictures with another woman.”

Adrian’s jaw tightened. “He was paid off.”

“Yes,” I sobbed, the tears I had bottled up on the plane finally breaking through the dam. “He was working at an import firm in Monterrey that suddenly secured a multi-million-dollar logistics contract with a subsidiary based in Houston three months ago. They gave him a promotion, a company car, and a playbook on how to drive me to the edge so I would pack up my baby and run away with nothing.”

Adrian didn't hesitate. He reached across the table, taking my trembling hands in his warm, steady grip.

“They thought they were dealing with a helpless, broke runaway mother who would cower in a tiny apartment in Pasadena and sign away her rights for a five-figure settlement,” Adrian vowed, his voice ringing with absolute, unshakeable power. “They had no idea you were sitting next to the only man in this country who has the legal firepower, the private security, and the personal motivation to burn their boardrooms to the ground.”