Chapter 54 Jealousy and Trust

Chapter 54 Jealousy and Trust

POV: Elizabeth

I lasted three days before the jealousy consumed me—three days of watching Sophia Sterling slide effortlessly back into Royce’s world as if she had never left it. Social media became my personal form of torture. Every photo from a Sterling Corp event showed her standing beside him, polished and poised, looking exactly where she belonged. In her latest post, she called him her “favorite business partner” and added a heart emoji. A heart emoji. It felt deliberate, like a quiet declaration that she still had a claim.

Jessica tried to talk sense into me during my visit to her halfway house. She took my phone away and told me to stop stalking Sophia’s Instagram, told me that if I trusted Royce, I needed to actually trust him—and if I didn’t, I should walk away. But it wasn’t that simple. Trusting Royce didn’t erase Sophia’s presence. It didn’t make her less beautiful, less sophisticated, less perfectly matched to his high-powered world. She understood board politics and corporate strategy. She fit into charity galas without hesitation. She probably never second-guessed which fork to use at a formal dinner. She was everything I wasn’t.

When Royce texted me about dinner after a board meeting, I hesitated before replying. I knew Sophia would be there. I knew she would position herself beside him, smiling like she belonged. I responded with a vague “Maybe,” pretending I had control over a situation that felt completely out of my hands. Jessica insisted I wasn’t competing with Sophia—that Royce had chosen me. But from where I stood, Royce had chosen his company, and Sophia came attached to it.

Marcus asked me to meet for coffee that same afternoon. He didn’t waste time with pleasantries. He told me Sophia was playing a calculated game—positioning herself beside Royce in every photo, making subtle comments about their shared history, manufacturing intimacy to push me out. Then he showed me something that changed everything. The five percent stake in Sterling Corp Sophia claimed she’d held since her divorce? She had purchased it only three months ago through a shell company called Meridian Holdings. When Marcus traced the ownership structure, it led back to a company tied to Helen Morrison.

The implication was horrifying. Helen Morrison—Royce’s enemy—had either sold or transferred that stock to Sophia just before her own operation collapsed. Sophia wasn’t a coincidental reappearance; she was a backup plan. She had embedded herself inside Sterling Corp to destabilize Royce from within. I needed more proof before confronting anyone, so I spent the next two days digging. With Marcus’s help and old contacts from Sterling, I followed financial trails and corporate records until I found something undeniable: a recorded phone call between Sophia and Helen, dated three weeks before Helen’s arrest.

I listened to the recording in my car outside Sophia’s hotel. Helen’s voice was calm and strategic, instructing Sophia to use the Sterling stock as leverage, to make Royce dependent on her, to exploit my insecurities until I walked away. When Sterling Corp finally collapsed, Sophia would acquire what remained. Royce would be left broken. The plan was meticulous and ruthless.

Instead of going straight to Royce, I confronted Sophia myself. She received me in her hotel suite wearing silk and a perfectly composed smile. When I played the recording, she didn’t deny it. She didn’t even flinch. She admitted the partnership with Helen openly, describing it as aligned interests—revenge and profit intertwined. She had positioned herself deliberately to destroy Royce.

Then she revealed her insurance policy: my father.

She showed me documents—emails and financial records that could be twisted to implicate him further in Helen’s crimes. My father, already facing charges, could see his plea deal vanish and his sentence expand from five years to twenty. Sophia had prepared for contingencies, and I was one of them. If I exposed her, she would hand those documents to the prosecutor. My father would die in prison.

Her ultimatum was simple. Walk away from Royce quietly, keep the recording to myself, and my father would serve his reduced sentence. Or fight her, and watch him lose the rest of his life.

When I left her suite, the proof on my phone felt heavier than stone. I had everything Royce needed to destroy her plan—concrete evidence of betrayal. But using it would destroy my father. Standing in the elevator, I stared at Royce’s contact, my thumb hovering over his name. One call could end Sophia’s manipulation. One call could save him.

But it could also condemn my father.

I closed my phone instead and walked out of the hotel alone. For the first time since Sophia reappeared, I understood the full scope of her strategy. She hadn’t just targeted Royce’s company or our relationship.

She had targeted my heart—and my family.

And for now, she had won.