Up in Manhattan everything fell apart.
The city was the same, lit windows, the traffic, ambition in a new suit, but it didn't feel right somehow. Not in the penthouse. Not in Olivia.
Alexander had changed. The cutting collected titan who even before pulled strings in private rooms had become unhinged., distant, distracted. He disappeared into marathon conference calls, cryptically alluding to enemies circling, and began locking down whole wings of the house.
Then one night, the third night after Paris Olivia heard him. Not the clipped confidence of a business call, but a tremor of panic in his voice.
"I said, the offshore accounts are clean. We would never trace back to Sinclair Holdings. We go now, or it all burns."
She padded out into the hallway, barefoot, robe cinched tight, heart fluttering.
His study door was a jar. There, she spotted the man she had married, pacing like a hunted animal, face flushed, the whiskey that was still untouched on the desktop.
I don't give a damn about what Harper's lawyers are threatening. You want to leak the photos, I'll bury him. You hear me? I own the narrative."
And then he looked up, straight at her.
They talked to get details, but the conversation was cut short by a tap. Then came the silence, colder than glass.
"Stay out of this, Olivia," he replied. No warmth. Nowhere to be found was the man who'd once called her his miracle. Just steel.
"I wasn't listening"
"You were always listening," he said. "It's what makes you dangerous."
He didn't speak to her again that night or the next. And three days later, Alexander Sinclair was dead. They said it was a heart attack. The private physician signed the papers before anyone could ask questions. No autopsy, no investigation.
But Liam didn't believe it, neither did Olivia.
Not when the night before, Alexander had changed his passcodes, cleared his desk, and made a call to a judge whose number Olivia recognized - one with the power to rewrite wills.
Not when a man that calculated suddenly collapsed alone in his study, with no witness but the shattered screen of his encrypted phone.
The city mourned, the stock market held its breath. the media crafted tributes overnight - Self-Made Billionaire, Manhattan's Kingmaker, The Quiet Power Behind the Curtain.
But at the funeral, all Olivia felt was the weight of two truths crushing down on her: freedom and guilt.
The world cried for him, she barely could.
The Sinclair family mausoleum was built like a palace of sorrow. Black stone, cold roses, a coffin polished to mirror shine. The elite filed past it with crocodile tears and cameras hidden in lapels. Old men whispered, young women lingered.
Olivia stood at the front in custom Dior, veil over her eyes, hands steady. But inside, she was spiraling.
Across the chapel, Clara Sinclair sat like an unbothered storm. Dressed in ceremonial black despite being Alexander's ex-wife, her posture was regal and her eyes laser-focused on Olivia.
She didn't cry, she didn't speak. But when their eyes met, Clara smiled. A small, knowing, venom-laced curve of the lips. You've stepped into the fire, it seemed to say. And I lit the match.
Beside Clara stood Vincent Harper, head bowed, lips twitching in amusement. The long-time rival. The vulture circling the still-warm empire.
And behind them, far behind, was Vanessa Brooks, Liam's ex-fiancée. Uninvited, unashamed, dressed like grief was a red carpet event.
Olivia turned away and locked eyes with Liam.
He hadn't moved the entire service. Black suit, expression carved from stone, lips pressed in controlled fury. But Olivia saw it - the way his hand curled into a fist when Clara stepped near the casket. The way his eyes burned when they lingered on Vanessa.
He didn't cry but he was ready to burn the world. That night, the estate was silent. No staff, no media, just shadows.
The smell of scotch and smoke still clinging to the walls as Olivia stood in the study, where Alexander had died. Her reflection in the window looked like someone else - a heiress, a widow, a liar.
Behind her, the door creaked open. It was Liam. His eyes were red-rimmed but dry. His tie was gone. His shirt half-buttoned.
They didn't speak. He crossed the room and pulled her into him like gravity. Their mouths met in a kiss laced with grief and guilt and too many things they couldn't say aloud.
It wasn't gentle, it wasn't love, it screamed survival.
They collapsed onto the couch, desperate, silent, tangled in heat and memory. The portrait of Alexander loomed above them, judging. Watching.
When it was over, they lay still.
"I can't stay away," Liam whispered.
"I don't want you to," Olivia replied. Her heart thundered. Her pulse ached.
In the dark, she didn't notice the figure watching them from outside in a black tinted glass SUV parked just right at the edge of the Sinclair estate. It was Clara Sinclair as sipped from a crystal wine glass; her red lips curled into a grin.
Then she turned to the man beside her, a private investigator, his camera still recording.
"They think they've won," Clara murmured, swirling the wine. "But they have no idea what I've already taken from them."
She held up a small flash drive, marked in red ink:
"Sinclair - Last Will & Testament - Final Revision"
The following morning, Olivia woke up to a figure sitting by the fireplace, It was Liam, he had a letter in his hands, his face as in his usual manner; unreadable.
"What is it?" she asked.
He handed it to her silently.
It was addressed to her, dated two days before Alexander's death.
"If you're reading this, Olivia, then you've betrayed me. And now, the real game begins." – A
Below the signature, a single sentence written in bold ink:
"There is a second will. And it changes everything."