Chapter 244

Chapter 244

That evening, Arabella sat on the window seat, not having moved all day.

She stared at her blurred reflection in the glass, feeling she'd never been so humiliated.

What she'd mistaken for Vincent's tenderness had actually been another woman's calm generosity. The feeling was even more mortifying than being outright rejected.

She couldn't even tell if Audrey was genuinely kind, or if this was her way of saying: You don't even qualify as my competition.

A knock suddenly sounded at the door.

Arabella's heart lurched. "Come in."

The moment the door opened, that flicker of hope in her eyes died, because it was Audrey.

Audrey walked in. "The staff mentioned you barely touched dinner. I had them warm up some milk for you."

"Thank you."

"Settling in okay?" Audrey's gaze was gentle.

Arabella fell silent for a moment. "It's fine. Everyone here has been very kind to me."

"Good." Audrey nodded. "Though there is something I'm curious about."

Arabella looked up at her.

"I looked into your background. During those years overseas, your work received consistently positive reviews and strong recognition in the industry. Before you came back, several galleries were competing to sign you, and all the media coverage was favorable. By all accounts, your homecoming exhibition shouldn't have been a smash hit necessarily, but it definitely shouldn't have been that dead either."

Audrey's tone was measured. "A well-known talent doesn't fall that fast. Unless someone deliberately sabotaged you behind the scenes."

Arabella's lashes trembled. "You're right."

"Someone wanted to make sure I failed."

"Declan?"

Arabella glanced up at her, let out a bitter laugh, and nodded. 

"He arranged my exhibition, introduced me to resources, pushed me into that position—all so he'd have a useful pawn in Imperial City's art scene. But once I became useless, he took it all back just as quickly."

"He wanted me to maintain a close relationship with Vincent." Arabella gave a self-mocking laugh. "But clearly, I've failed."

Audrey's voice softened. "Declan abandoned you because he thinks you have no more value to him. But you know perfectly well you're not lacking in ability. The fact that your work secured contracts with overseas galleries proves your talent was always there. He just temporarily cut off your visibility."

She paused. "If you're willing, I can arrange a place for you to stay. Nothing connected to the Brown family—just an apartment I own personally. Quiet, not far from downtown, good for focusing on your own work."

"Why are you helping me?" Arabella asked.

"Because I think someone with your talent shouldn't be destroyed by someone like Declan," Audrey spoke candidly. "And I have my own considerations too."

Arabella was quiet for a moment, then lowered her head. "Alright. Thank you."

Audrey stood. "I'll have someone pick you up tomorrow. Get some rest tonight."

As Audrey walked back down the hallway, her mind was still turning over what Arabella had said. Declan's methods were even more vicious than she'd imagined.

He could build someone up to great heights, then abandon them without a second thought. A man that heartless wouldn't take being refused the Black Raven acquisition lying down.

Back in the study, Audrey opened her laptop and began carefully reviewing the encrypted Black Raven files.

After going through them page by page, she finally understood what Declan really wanted.

The records made it clear that Black Raven's core value wasn't just the elite security personnel scattered across the globe, ready to deploy at a moment's notice.

Those operatives were certainly formidable, but what made Black Raven truly irreplaceable was its proprietary network security architecture.

This system didn't just cover the dispatch protocols for physical security—it included an extremely sophisticated data encryption and anti-tracking framework. When Bronte designed it years ago, she'd poured everything she knew about cryptography into it.

Supposedly, no known organization had ever cracked its underlying logic. That was Black Raven's real soul.

Audrey suspected that what Declan truly wanted to buy was the full rights to this technology.

But after reviewing the system herself, she realized that with Ethan's talent and the experience he'd accumulated over the years, given enough time and resources, he was fully capable of building something even better than Black Raven's current framework.

In other words, even if she sold off the existing technology rights, as long as she could still mobilize those retired members, whether the Black Raven name existed or not didn't really matter to her.

If Declan wanted it, maybe giving it to him wouldn't be such a big deal after all.