The Princess’s Gambit

The Princess’s Gambit
Ashton’s POV

The iron gates of the Taylor estate ground open slowly, as if welcoming prey into a wolf’s den. I did not care. I climbed out of the car before the engine had even fully cut out. The guards tried to block my path, but one look from me made their courage wither, and they retreated in an orderly line.

"David! Get out here!" I roared into the grand lobby I so despised.

A middle aged man in a silk suit appeared from behind the spiral staircase. David Taylor looked at me with a sickening composure. There was no fear in his eyes, only the arrogance of a man who believed he held all the cards.

"Ashton Williams. Arriving so early without an invitation? You truly have no manners," David said as he poured whiskey into a glass.

I stepped forward, seizing him by the collar until the glass nearly slipped from his hand. "Stop this charade. I know you are working with Sandra to challenge our marriage. I will destroy what is left of your business empire before sunrise if you dare touch Lily."

David merely let out a soft, dismissive laugh. "Sandra? I do not need that madwoman to take back what is mine. I am doing this to save Lily. She is my daughter."

"Daughter?" I sneered. "You threw her away when you needed assets, and now you want her back just to satisfy your ego? Lily loves me, David."

"Does she?" David broke my grip with a rough shove. "Then why did my people report that she just left your mansion with a suitcase in her hand? If she loves you so much, why is she running away?"

My heart hammered against my ribs. Running away? "What do you mean?"

"She is gone, Ashton. And she did not come to me," David smiled slyly. "She realized who you truly are. I may be cunning, but you. You are a monster who married her for revenge."

I stood frozen. A cold chill spread through my entire body. Lily was gone. And what made my heart ache even more was imagining Max waking up tomorrow morning to find that Lily was no longer in our home.

Lily’s POV

I closed the taxi door with trembling hands. In front of me stood an old apartment building on the outskirts of the city. This was the home of the only person who might give me the truth without the filter of business or family grudges.

I knocked on the door of unit 302. Moments later, it opened. Kelly, Ashton’s sister, stared at me with wide eyes. Behind her, an eight year old boy with hair just like Ashton’s looked up at me.

"Lily?" the boy asked with a confused expression. It was Max, Ashton’s nephew, whom I had come to love as my own. "Why are you here so late? Where is Daddy?"

"Max, sweetie. Go back to your room for a moment, alright? I need to talk to Auntie Kelly," I said, trying to smile despite my eyes being swollen from crying. I could not bear to look at his innocent face. Max called Ashton 'Daddy' because Ashton had raised him since his father passed away, and our home was the only world he knew.

"But why do you have a suitcase?" Max asked again before Kelly gently guided him back into his room.

Kelly turned back to me, her face pale with panic. "What happened, Lily? Why did you bring a suitcase, and why was Max woken up?"

I showed her the document Daniel had sent through my campus email. Kelly read it carefully. Her face went white, and then, slowly, a laugh broke out. It was a laugh full of bitterness. "Daniel truly hasn't changed. He is still using the same methods he used when he destroyed me."

"What do you mean?"

"Look at the seal in the bottom right corner, Lily. This is the stamp of a law firm that went bankrupt five years ago. Daniel edited an old draft Ashton made back when he was consumed by revenge, then changed the date to make it look like it was created just last week."

I was stunned. "So. It is a fake?"

"The content might be an original draft from Ashton’s dark past, but the date and the agreement are fabrications," Kelly looked at me deeply. "Ashton did want to destroy your father, Lily. That much is true. But since he found you. And since he started thinking about Max’s future, he threw all those drafts away. Daniel must have stolen this from an old archive."

Guilt began to crawl into my chest, squeezing my heart until I could barely breathe. I had doubted him. I had screamed at the man who was fighting to protect me and Max’s future.

"Daniel and Sandra aren't just trying to destroy your marriage, Lily," Kelly continued seriously. "Tomorrow morning, Daniel is going to present his research. He wants to use your relationship as a case study for manipulation. He wants to humiliate you."

I clenched my fists. "He won't be able to do it."

Ashton’s POV

I drove my car like a madman back toward the mansion. My mind was a chaotic mess until my phone rang. It was Mark, my head of security.

"Sir, we have located Mrs. Williams’s phone signal. She is at Miss Kelly’s apartment. Young Master Max is there with them as well."

I let out a heavy sigh of relief. "Keep a close watch from a distance, Mark. Make sure they are safe, but do not let Lily know you are there."

"Wait, sir. There is something else. We just received data from a counter hack into Professor Daniel’s account. There is a recording of a conversation between him and Sandra from this afternoon."

"Play it," I commanded coldly.

Daniel’s voice crackled through the car speakers. "Lily has swallowed the bait of the fake document. Tomorrow at the research presentation, I will announce this case to the public. Sandra, make sure your family’s media outlets are ready to spread it. Williams will be ruined by tomorrow morning."

I smirked darkly behind the steering wheel. They thought they had won. They thought they had trapped a lion.

"Mark, contact the legal team. And make sure all media outlets working with Sandra are blocked from campus tomorrow morning. We will not be picking Lily up tonight."

"Why, sir?"

"Let her feel safe tonight with Kelly and Max," I said, my voice softening even as it turned lethal. "Tomorrow morning, I am going to give Professor Daniel a very large stage. And I want to see his face when that stage collapses on top of him."