Chapter 20 Veronica Revenge
"You are the beneficiary?”
"Apparently, I just found out thirty seconds ago," Sophia replied, lifting one shoulder in a gentle shrug.
A ripple of laughter swept the room. Phones were already out now; there was no pretense of subtlety. Tomorrow’s headlines were writing themselves. Victoria found her voice at last, brittle and incredulous.
“She’s a second-year postgraduate, Alex. She’s twenty-four.”
“Twenty-five next month,” she corrected sweetly.
“And I’ve already published more on hostile takeover defenses than your entire legal team combined, Victoria. Dr. Harrow can confirm, he gave me a First and told me to ‘aim higher than academia.’”
She glanced back at her stunned lecturer.
“Looks like I took your advice.”
Harrow let out a strangled sound that might have been pride or cardiac arrest. Alex’s lips brushed her temple again, barely hiding his grin.
"Who else wants to question my girlfriend's credentials?" he asked the entire room, his voice silky with danger.
There was a dead silence. Then an elderly dowager in the front row began clapping, slow, deliberate applause that quickly spread. Within seconds, the entire salon erupted in thunder.
Victoria stood still, diamonds flashing at her throat like strobe lights on a sinking ship.
Sophia leaned in, allowing only Alex and Victoria to hear.
"Checkmate, darling," she whispered.
Victoria's smile had finally cracked.
She turned on her heel and walked out, heels striking marble like gunshots, the crowd parting for her in the same way it did for royalty.
The doors swung closed behind her. Alex looked down at Sophia, eyes blazing with something that looked a lot like awe.
“Remind me never to play chess with you,” he murmured.
Sophia laughed softly and wickedly and threaded her fingers through his.
"It's too late, I already own the board," she explained.
Three weeks later. Victoria stood at the head of the glass table, white suit immaculate, voice as cold as the marble floor beneath her Louboutins.
“Phase One is complete,” she said.
On the screen behind her: a grainy still from the Claridge’s security feed. Alex and Sophia leaving the gala at 2:14 a.m.
Sophia’s red dress was hiked high on her thighs, Alex’s hand disappearing beneath the silk as he pressed her against the lift wall, mouths fused, oblivious to the camera.
The men around the table—three Langford loyalists, two hedge-fund raiders, and one tabloid editor who owed her favors—watched in silence. Victoria clicked to the next slide.
Target: Sophia Elizabeth Hart
Objective: Total annihilation of credibility, academic career, and relationship with Alex Maxwell
Timeline: 14 days
She laid it out like a military briefing.
Academic sabotage. A forged plagiarism report on Sophia’s master’s dissertation, already planted in the university’s system a week ago.
Anonymous tip to the examination board scheduled for tomorrow morning. If the university expels her, every future employer will see the black mark. Leaked bedroom photos were taken by a private drone through Sophia’s dorm window the night Alex flew in from Paris.
Cropped and blurred just enough to avoid legal action, sharp enough to destroy. The editor at her elbow was ready to run them on the front page of tomorrow’s Daily Mail with the headline.
“TYCOON’S STUDENT MISTRESS: THE SEX SCANDAL THAT COST £800M”
A burner account is already active on every university gossip forum. Claims that “Sophia Hart” slept her way into her first job, traded sex for references, and blackmailed lecturers.
Screenshots “proving” she bragged about controlling Alex’s fortune.
And the kill shot A doctored audio file was deepfake technology, indistinguishable from real.
Sophia’s voice, laughing.
“He thinks he loves me. Give it six months and I’ll have walked away with half his shares. Men like Alex are easy when you know which buttons to press.”
Victoria clicked to the final slide, a calendar.
“On day fourteen, Sophia Hart will be academically ruined and publicly shamed, and Alex will believe she played him from the start. He will crawl back to me to salvage what’s left of his empire. And when he does…”
She let the silence finish the sentence. One of the raiders cleared his throat.
“And if he doesn’t crawl?” Victoria’s smile was small and terrible.
“Then we trigger the poison-pill clause I buried in the original merger documents. The one his lawyers missed. The second he transferred voting control to a ‘non-approved beneficiary,’ a postgraduate with no security clearance, the clause activated. All I need is one board vote to enforce it. Maxwell Capital becomes Langford property by Christmas.”
She closed the laptop.
“Begin.”
Next Morning at Shopia’s inbox
Subject: Urgent, Academic Misconduct Hearing
Dear Miss Hart,
You are required to attend a formal disciplinary panel tomorrow at 10 a.m. regarding allegations of plagiarism in your thesis.
On the other side, at Alex's penthouse, a single message from an unknown number.
Audio file attached. He was in the shower when it arrived. By the time he stepped out, towel around his hips, water still dripping down his back, the file had already begun to play through the penthouse speakers.
Sophia’s voice filled the marble bathroom.
“He thinks he loves me. Give it six months and I’ll have walked away with half his shares…”
Alex stood dripping in the bathroom doorway, towel knotted low on his hips, phone in his hand like a loaded gun. Sophia’s recorded laughter still echoed off the marble.
“…half his shares… men like Alex are easy…”
He played it again. And again. Each loop carved something deeper. Sophia padded in from the bedroom wrapped in his black dress shirt, hair tousled, humming. She stopped dead when she saw his face.
“Alex?”
He turned the screen toward her. Her own unmistakable voice spilled out of the speaker. Sophia went white.
“That’s not me, Alex. I’ve never–”
He didn’t move. Just watched her with eyes that had suddenly gone winter-cold.
“I want to believe you,” he said, voice terrifyingly quiet. “But this was sent from the same encrypted server Victoria’s security team uses. And the metadata says it was recorded the night I flew in from Paris.”
Sophia stepped forward, hand outstretched.
“Give me the phone.”