Chapter 7 - The Debt of Twenty Years
For twenty years, High Ridge society had believed that power was permanent, that a family name carved onto university libraries and hospital wings made them untouchable. They had forgotten the young developer they had ruined two decades ago—the man whose patents they had stolen, whose reputation they had smeared, and who had taken his own life in the shadow of this very estate.
They had assumed Victoria was merely an ambitious orphan trying to climb into their world through sheer luck and charm. They had failed to trace the capital funding her private investment firm. They had failed to see that every board seat she had quietly acquired over the past three years was part of a calculated siege. She was not an outsider begging for a seat at their table; she was the creditor who had come back to burn the table to the ground.
