Chapter 156 Chapter 156
Dominic’s POV
Power doesn’t collapse in silence , it screams on its way down. By dawn, the city was already vibrating with it: headlines, whispers, the kind of panic only money can buy.
Z-Core Holdings Under Fire, Allegations of Embezzlement and Fraud Surface. Stanley Voss Implicated in Offshore Money Laundering Scheme. I’d spent weeks building the leak.
Each document traced a precise line from Z-Core’s legitimate accounts to shell subsidiaries, to trust funds linked to Stanley’s name.
The offshore transfers, the falsified audits, the laundering through charitable fronts every piece of it had been there, buried in those encrypted drives Liana found.
All I did was set them free. I wanted precision, not chaos. Exposure, not destruction but by sunrise, I knew control had slipped. Someone had released everything. Not the curated evidence.
“Dominic, what the hell did you do?” Her voice was sharp, frantic.
“Good morning to you too.”
“Don’t joke. The leak’s everywhere. News sites, international wires, social feeds. It’s not just about Stanley. They’re saying you were part of the laundering network. Your name’s in the forensic analysis.”
I closed my eyes, exhaling through my teeth. “Fingerprints.”
“What?”
“They used copies of the originals. I must’ve handled them before the upload. Whoever mirrored the drives left my prints on the chain of evidence.”
“Then it looks like you leaked your own crimes.”
“Which would be poetic,” I muttered.
“Dominic, this is serious. The Financial Bureau’s already calling it a joint operation. They think you and Stanley worked together.”
That irony wasn’t lost on me. “We did,” I said quietly. “Once.”
After the call, I paced the narrow room, the city light slicing through the blinds. The media had done what I couldn’t turned Stanley’s empire into a feeding frenzy.
Every network was running footage of him storming out of Z-Core’s headquarters, reporters shouting his name. Every word he refused to say was another admission but the celebration was hollow because the narrative was mutating, like rot spreading beneath the surface.
Now I wasn’t just the man who’d once taken the fall. I was the co-conspirator who came back to burn his partner and that meant I’d become the story.
By midday, the knock came. Liana stood at the door, pale but composed, rain still dripping from her coat. She didn’t wait for an invitation.
“You did this,” she said.
“I warned you it was coming.”
“Not like this.” Her voice trembled, not from fear, but fury. “You exposed everything. The accounts, the trusts, the board. Do you have any idea what kind of chaos this creates?”
“Yes.”
“And you knew your prints were on those files?”
“I didn’t plan to release those versions.”
Her eyes searched mine. “Then who did?”
“Someone inside Z-Core,” I said slowly. “Someone who had access after the board meeting. Someone who wanted both of us destroyed.”
Her silence told me she already suspected who. Stanley. He was too smart to defend himself in court. He’d drag everyone else into the mud instead including me.
She crossed her arms. “So what now? You clear your name while mine burns with yours?”
“Liana…”
“No. You promised me you were after truth, not vengeance.”
“I am.”
“Then why does it feel like you’re burning everything just to watch him choke on the smoke?”
Her words hit harder than I wanted them to. Because maybe she was right. Maybe this wasn’t justice anymore — maybe it was the hunger for balance, for pain to have a matching echo.
I turned away, staring out the window. “You heard what he said, didn’t you? He forged the evidence. He built your company on lies and blood. You can’t fix something that corrupted.”
“So you burn it?”
“If that’s what it takes.”
She stepped closer, her reflection beside mine in the glass. “You sound just like him.”
That cut deeper than she knew. My laptop pinged — a secure message. From an anonymous server I didn’t recognize.
“You wanted exposure. Now you have it. The rest will follow.”
Attached was a news clip. I played it, sound low. The anchor’s voice was bright, coldly professional:
“New revelations suggest the whistleblower known as Northbridge may have been complicit in the original embezzlement. Authorities are investigating Dominic Smith’s role in the Z-Core financial network…”
Liana watched, silent.
When it ended, she said softly, “They’re coming for you.”
“I know.”
“You could’ve told me.”
“I didn’t want you implicated.”
She laughed bitterly. “Too late for that.”
The tension stretched between us, not the old kind, not desire or anger or memory, but something sharper and inevitability.
For the first time, I saw it in her face, it was not trust, not hope, but resolve. She wasn’t standing with me. She was preparing to stand against me if she had to.
“You think I’m like him,” I said quietly.
“I think you’ve forgotten where justice ends and obsession begins.”
“Maybe obsession’s all that’s left.”
Her hand tightened on the strap of her bag. “Then we’re both already lost.” She turned and walked out before I could stop her.
I stood there for a long time after she left, all of it was alive, feeding on scandal and the truth I’d released, meant to free me, had chained me again.
My laptop chimed once more, another message. Same anonymous sender“You wanted the truth.
Attached was a single photo. Stanley, sitting in a darkened room and beside him, a figure I hadn’t seen in years, a woman I thought was gone. Elia, Alive.
The cursor blinked at the edge of the screen, waiting.