Chapter 3

Sebastian stared at me, his brows slightly furrowed. Behind him, Celeste was gently patting Lily’s back, her eyes gleaming with undetected malice.

They were waiting for my usual hysteria. They expected the "desperate housekeeper" to beg on her knees just to stay near the child she raised.

Instead, I had smiled and said, *"I'll handle the wedding."*

The air in the grand hall seemed to freeze. A flicker of relief, followed by sheer, triumphant arrogance, crossed Sebastian’s eyes. It was the satisfaction of a master whose dog had just obediently rolled over.

"Excellent," he flashed his most practiced, hypocritical smile. "I knew you’d be reasonable, Clara. You always know your place."

Celeste chimed in, her voice sickly sweet. "Oh, Clara, make sure you use the premium imported roses for the reception. And since I am the bride, I'll need unrestricted access to the Veil Estate's main jewelry vault starting tomorrow."

I didn't even glance at her. I stared directly at Sebastian, my voice clinical and sharp.

"If I am handling this, I have one condition," I said. "To ensure the flawless reputation of the Veil Estate, all budget approvals, inventory movements, and staff deployments must be explicitly signed and authorized by me personally."

Celeste frowned, dropping her sweet act. "Aren't you overstepping? Why do you need to control my jewelry access?"

"Because I am the one managing the estate's liabilities," I replied coldly, looking back at Sebastian. "What’s the matter? Are you worried the wedding won't be perfect, or are you worried I’ll look too closely at your messy accounts?"

Sebastian scoffed, utterly unimpressed. In his mind, I was just a bitter employee making a pathetic grasp for phantom power before being fired.

He waved a hand dismissively at Celeste. "Let her have the clipboard. Don't argue with the staff, darling. After all, in a month, everything here will belong to us anyway."

He turned his back on me and walked away, his arm wrapped around my daughter and his mistress.

The moment the heavy oak doors shut behind them, the polite smile vanished from my face. I walked straight into my private study and locked the door.

I dialed my estate lawyer’s direct line.

Three minutes later, an encrypted legal file hit my inbox. The stinging lines of text confirmed exactly why Sebastian had been so eager to humor me: He had used a forged signature to officially file for divorce three weeks ago.

He planned to use my labor to organize his perfect wedding, bleed my estate's accounts dry to fund it, and then have security sweep me out the door the moment the papers were legally processed.

"Ms. Veil," my lawyer’s voice on the phone was ice-cold. "Sebastian has already utilized his temporary management access to move the priceless bridal archives and the Veil Blue Sapphire to his own wedding team. But the moment you revoke his proxy authority, everything he has touched becomes stolen property."

I opened my laptop and pulled up the ultimate document: The Master Authorization Revocation Form.

He thought he owned this empire because I had quietly let him manage it for eight years to save his male ego. He had forgotten who actually signed the deeds.

I picked up my gold fountain pen. The scratch of the nib against the paper sounded like the unsheathing of a sword.

"Process this immediately," I instructed the lawyer. "As of midnight tonight, lock him out of the main accounts, the vaults, and the security grid."

"Understood. And the physical access, ma'am?"

I dropped the pen and looked out the window at the sprawling grounds of my estate. A chilling, bloodless smile curled on my lips.

"Let him wake up tomorrow morning and realize," I whispered to the empty room, "that he no longer owns the keys to the bed he sleeps in."