I should not have opened it.
But pain makes people curious in dangerous ways.
The video showed Victoria sitting at Dominic’s dining table, crying into a linen napkin. Arthur looked furious. Dominic sat beside her, his face pale but composed.
Natalie’s voice came from behind the camera.
“Just so you know, Audrey, everyone sees what you’re doing. Taking Leo away to punish Dominic? That’s disgusting. Mom hasn’t stopped crying. Dominic is devastated.”
The camera shifted to Dominic.
He looked directly into it.
“Come home,” he said softly. “Before this gets worse.”
Then the video ended.
I watched it twice.
Not because I believed him.
Because something in the background caught my attention.
A leather document pouch lay on the table near Dominic’s elbow.
My father’s crest was stamped faintly into the corner.
I knew that pouch.
It belonged to Brooks Global’s private executive contracts division.
My heart began to pound.
I forwarded the video to Marianne and my father.
Less than five minutes later, my father walked into the room wearing the same suit, as if he had not slept and had never planned to.
“Where did he get that?” I asked.
His expression was unreadable.
“We’re finding out.”
“Dad.”
He did not answer quickly enough.
I shifted Leo against my chest. “What is it?”
My father looked toward the sleeping baby, then back at me.
“There was one document missing from our archive audit last quarter.”
“What document?”
“A preliminary acquisition draft. Never executed. Never approved. Prepared internally after Dominic first approached one of our subsidiaries about partnership.”
My mouth went cold.
“You made an acquisition draft?”
“We evaluate everything. It never left the building.”
“But Dominic has it.”
“It appears so.”
I looked back at the frozen image on my phone. Dominic’s calm face. The pouch. The faint crest.
“That’s what he’s been showing investors.”
My father’s silence answered for him.
Dominic had not merely implied Brooks Global wanted to buy his company.
He had stolen something close enough to proof.
A document my father could not publicly acknowledge without revealing an internal security breach.
A document that, in the wrong hands, could move markets, destroy reputations, and trigger investigations.
Suddenly, Dominic was not just cruel.
He was dangerous.
By morning, the world began to turn.