Chapter 5
Charles's eyes were bloodshot, his face twisted with fury.
"Claire, you belong to me, alive or dead! Don't even think about leaving me, not now, not ever!" he snarled.
Charles's true colors were showing; his twisted, possessive side was out in the open.
Claire jerked her wrist out of his grip, her eyes blazing with open disgust.
"You will agree," Claire said.
She looked at him, a cruel smile curling at the corners of her mouth, her eyes just as merciless.
"You'll agree soon enough. Because if you don't divorce me, your precious Lily is headed straight to prison," she said, her voice like a blade, icy and unyielding.
She threw down the ultimate threat, tying the divorce to Lily's fate; there was no way out for him now.
Just then, her phone rang.
It was Emily calling.
Claire answered the call right in front of Charles, completely unfazed.
"Hey, Emmy," she said.
Emily's voice buzzed with excitement on the other end. "Claire, the audit team's already in the finance department, and our people have the CFO under control, right on the spot!"
Claire replied, totally unfazed, "Got it. Let them start."
She hung up, didn't even spare a glance at the ghostly pale Charles, and walked out.
*****
The audit team worked at breakneck speed; their efficiency was off the charts.
It didn't take long for them to sniff out trouble in NovaTech's books, which looked squeaky clean on the surface.
With Claire flagging the critical points, they quickly locked onto the funding chain for Lily's new energy project and found a gaping hole worth billions of dollars.
The flow of that missing money matched up exactly with the illegal fundraising case the prosecutor's office was investigating.
Emily called Claire, her voice buzzing with excitement.
"Claire, the evidence is rock solid. This time, Lily's got nowhere to run," she said.
Claire's revenge plan had just reached a game-changing turning point.
The news reached the prosecutor's office in no time.
That afternoon, a team of prosecutors stormed into NovaTech and hauled Lily out in front of everyone.
Right before she was shoved into the police car, Lily was desperately calling Charles, crying her eyes out, her voice raw with panic.
"Charles, please, save me! I don't want to go to jail. I really don't want to go to jail," Lily wailed into the phone.
Lily's karma finally caught up to her. Her desperate cries hit Charles like a sledgehammer, forcing him to make the hardest choice of his life.
Charles was caught in a brutal dilemma.
On one side, his company was teetering on the edge, about to go down in flames thanks to the financial mess.
On the other, there was Lily, the woman he'd kept close to his heart for years.
He locked himself in his office, chain-smoking one cigarette after another.
With smoke curling around him, his mind was a mess, caught between two impossible choices.
The only way to save Lily was to make Claire stop.
And the only way to make Claire stop was to sign the divorce papers.
Claire had him cornered; he had no choice but to make a decision.
In the end, Lily meant more to him than anything else.
He called Claire and told her to meet him at the divorce office; he finally agreed to sign the papers.
Standing outside the divorce office, Charles stared at Claire's cold face, making one last, hopeless attempt to sway her.
"I'll sign it," he said, his voice rough and hoarse.
"But you have to call off the audit right now, and you need to get Lily out of jail," Charles said, his voice desperate and pleading.
This was his final bargaining chip.
Claire looked at him like he was the biggest joke she'd ever seen.
A mocking smirk tugged at her lips.
"Charles, are you still this clueless? Right now, I'm the one calling the shots, not you," she added, her tone icy and unyielding. "Sign the papers first. Then, maybe I'll spare your precious Lily."
She was in complete control now.
Charles stared her down, his fists clenched so hard you could hear his knuckles crack.
In the end, he finally caved.
He picked up the pen and, with deliberate, heavy strokes, signed his name on the divorce papers.
His eyes were cold and menacing, like a pool of stagnant water.
'Claire, you made me do this,' he thought.
He kept repeating it to himself, over and over.
He signed the divorce papers, but at the same time, a dark, twisted plan was already brewing in his mind.
The killing intent was already in the air, and the suffocating calm before the storm made it hard to breathe.
Claire took the signed divorce papers, without so much as a backward glance, and walked away.
She was heading to meet up with Emily, ready to finally celebrate her hard-won freedom.
At last, it was truly over.
As Claire thought this, the tension that had been building inside her finally eased a little.
Just as she stepped down the curb, ready to cross the street,
a massive, out-of-control truck suddenly came barreling around the corner like a madman.
The blaring horn and the screech of tires filled the air.
The truck was clearly aiming right for her.
Claire didn't even have a chance to react; her eyes caught only the driver's blank, emotionless face before everything happened.
And across the street, right at the entrance of the marriage bureau, stood Charles Goodman, his eyes colder than ice as he watched it all go down.
Claire's mind reeled; Charles was actually willing to kill his own wife with his own hands, just to save Lily.
The impact slammed into her, overwhelming and unstoppable.
Claire felt her body tossed into the air like a leaf, then crashing down hard.
In the last second before she lost consciousness, only one thought remained in her mind. 'Charles, even if I become a ghost, I'll never let you go...'
From a distance, Charles withdrew his gaze, his face cold and emotionless. He pulled out his phone and dialed a number, his voice utterly devoid of emotion.
"Clean it up," he said.
He thought he had finally gotten rid of this obstacle for good.
With Claire's fate still unknown, Charles believed he had won.