Chapter 87 88
A few days later.
The strike came fast.
One morning, Darren woke to a pounding on his office doors. Not clients. Not reporters. Police.
The McLarens had made their move.
They dragged him out in front of his own staff, cuffed like a petty criminal. The charge sheet was thick—market manipulation, wire fraud, abuse of client accounts. None of it should have stuck, but the evidence was damning, airtight.
Too airtight.
Because every document, every lead, every digital breadcrumb pointing to Darren had been fed there. Quietly, carefully. Tomas had slipped them into the system like a master puppeteer, all while Krystal watched with the patience of a woman who had rehearsed this play before.
By the time Darren was thrown into an interrogation room, sweat beading at his temple, the news was already everywhere.
“McLaren Stocks Collapse Amid Scandal.”
“Billion-Dollar Dynasty Declared Bankrupt.”
“Anonymous Sources Point to Darren Johnson’s Scheme.”
The city buzzed like a hive.
And in that chaos, Darren was the perfect villain.
The McLarens thought they had cornered him, but Krystal played both sides flawlessly. She let Darren see her fury at the injustice, let him believe she’d march into the fire for him. And in private, she whispered to Tomas to release just enoughmore evidence to bury the McLarens deeper, ensuring their downfall looked irreversible.
By evening, Manhattan believed the McLarens were finished. Their empire crumbled in headlines, assets frozen, creditors circling like vultures.
And Darren?
He was in a holding cell, shaking, furious, confused. Convinced he’d been betrayed by the McLarens alone.
And the only name he thought of for salvation was Krystal.
The irony, of course, was delicious.
Krystal McLaren – POV
I always said revenge should be taken slowly—like a well-aged wine, not a shot of whiskey. But tonight, oh tonight, it tasted like both.
The McLarens? Finished.
The so-called dynasty of Manhattan’s elite was nothing but a crumbling tower on the front page of every major paper. Bankrupt. Corrupt. Broken. Their stocks tanked so fast it was almost poetic—decades of power dissolved in less than a week.
And Darren Johnson?
Branded the villain. The man who toppled them. The greedy lawyer who played too close to the fire and burned down the empire. The world believed it, the city gossiped about it, and the police paraded him like a trophy.
I could almost laugh.
Because Darren truly thought he had been the hunter. That every bold move he made against the McLarens was his idea. That his desperate whispers in my ear were secret promises meant only for me.
When in truth, every step was laid out for him.
Every “document” Tomas fed him.
Every late-night comfort I offered.
Every soft smile, every perfectly brewed coffee, every sigh in the dark.
I pulled the strings.
And now, he dances in chains.
This morning, Tomas called from the courthouse steps, his tone amused. “He’s cracking. Keeps asking for you, like you’re the only one who can save him.”
Of course he is.
Darren has always been predictable when cornered. In my second life, that predictability cost me everything—my company, my family, my life.
But this time, it will cost him.
I looked at my reflection in the penthouse window, silk robe tied loosely, Manhattan glittering beneath me. My lips curled upward.
This was the seat of power. The one he thought he would steal from me before. Now, it belonged to me again.
And better yet—he didn’t even see it coming.
When he’s released—and he will be, because Tomas has arranged the evidence to bend perfectly—I’ll be there waiting. The angel who swoops in with comfort, money, and whispered reassurances. The only “ally” left when the rest of Manhattan spits his name like poison.
He’ll cling to me harder than ever. He’ll think I’m the reason he survived, that I’m the one thing keeping him sane.
And the more he falls, the sweeter my revenge will taste.
Payback was delicious.
But watching Darren Johnson fall in love with the woman planning his ruin?
That was divine.
The fluorescent light in the interrogation room buzzed like a trapped insect. It made everything look harder — the angles of Darren’s face, the hollows beneath his eyes, the neat crease of his suit that a day ago might have signaled control. Now it only emphasized how threadbare he’d become: a man worn down by fear, by miscalculation, by the dangerous luxury of believing he was untouchable.
He sat on a metal chair bolted to the floor, wrists unbound but heavy as if cuffed. Across from him, a blank recorder blinked red. His palms were damp; his throat scraped every time he swallowed. He had replayed her possible entrances a hundred times: a storming plea, a soft whisper, a shout. He had imagined her rescuing him, smoothing glossy newspapers and offering bail with a conspiratorial smile. In every fantasy she was the savior — the woman who had given him solace on couches and coffee that tasted like home.
Instead, when the police officer opened the door and said, “Ms. McLaren is here to see you,” the hollow in his chest both clenched and leapt. He thought: she came. She did come.
When she walked in, she looked immaculate in a way that cut, not comforted. Evening silk, a single strand of hair escaping, expression carefully neutral as if she’d rehearsed being unreadable a thousand times and had finally perfected it. Up close, there was no softness at all, only the faint scent he knew now like a memory: jasmine and something colder. He’d loved that scent. Loving it felt like a betrayal now.
She sat without touching him, hands folded in her lap, eyes steady. The room felt smaller, as if the walls leaned in to listen.
“Darren,” she said, voice even, almost clinical. “You should have known better than to make yourself a spectacle.”
He flinched as though she had struck him. Fury and panic crowed together to the surface. “Why?” he burst, before he could measure the humility from which the question should have come. “Why did you—what did I do to deserve this? I loved you. I—” His voice cracked on the last word; it sounded ridiculous, and pathetic, and painfully true.
Krystal’s face didn’t change with his confession. She had seen confessions before: whispered at bedside, screamed across deals, signed in ink. None of them softened her.
Her eyes darkened. When she finally spoke, the words were slow, chosen. “You were stupid to fall in love with me,” she said. “That was your first mistake.”