Stay Away From Her

"You shouldn't have said that to me, Mr. Crawford." Cora shifted her gaze from the billionaire and shot a deadly glance at Vanessa.

"Don't mess with me. Otherwise, I will get back at you and make you suffer more!" Cora hissed.

Her voice dropped to a fierce, venomous pitch that resonated in the silent office. The air in the room seemed to freeze around her words.

Vanessa shivered. The genuine terror crept up her spine, freezing the blood in her veins. She stared at the woman standing a few feet away, her mind reeling in confusion. She questioned what had happened to the gentle, vulnerable sister she once terrorized with ease. The delicate features remained the same, but the eyes held a chilling, uncompromising fire that left no room for negotiation. This was a predator standing in front of her. The transition was jarring.

Victor watched the tense standoff. His gaze shifted from Cora's defiant stance to Vanessa's trembling form. He digested the raw intimidation radiating from his new design director. He turned his attention to Vanessa.

"Stay away from her in the future," Victor issued a soft but firm warning.

Vanessa felt the breath leave her lungs. She looked up at the cold-blooded man in profound shock. She had been with Victor for five years, playing the role of his perfect, agreeable companion. This was the first time he had defended another woman. This was the first time he had directed a warning at her over someone else. She wondered what kind of spell Cora had cast to make such a ruthless man treat her differently. Pushing the rising panic down, she rapidly hid her bitter resentment behind a tender, plaintive facade. Her eyes watered with fresh, manufactured sorrow, pooling at the corners of her carefully applied makeup.

"Cora, is there a misunderstanding between us? Why would you..." Vanessa began.

Her tone dripped with heartbreaking vulnerability, aimed directly at Victor's protective instincts.

Before she could finish weaving her web of manipulation, the heavy office door swung open. Milo stepped into the fraught atmosphere. His expression was urgent, his eyes darting between the three occupants of the room.

"Mr. Crawford, Stryker just called. Your father is waiting for you there." Milo announced.

Victor shot one last piercing look at the two sisters. The escalating friction between them grated on his nerves, tangling with the chaotic events of the past few days. The office felt too small to contain the mounting hostility. He turned on his heel and strode out of the office, leaving the suffocating tension behind.

The scene shifted to the dark viewing room at Stryker. The expansive space was swallowed by shadows, save for the bright glow of the central wall monitor. Edmund Crawford sat in a plush leather armchair. His posture was rigid as he stared intently at the paused frame on the screen. The audition video of the twins played on a silent loop, casting a pale, blue light over his seasoned features.

Edmund was fifty-eight this year. He had handed the reins of the Crawford Group over to Victor five years ago, leaving his eldest son to elevate the family business to unprecedented heights. His younger son, Felix, was a medical fanatic who practically lived in research laboratories and dusty libraries. With his sons managing their respective domains, Edmund poured his enthusiasm into the entertainment industry. He focused on producing reality shows and television series behind the camera. Today, his focus was hijacked by one specific audition tape. The faces on the screen held him hostage.

The heavy soundproof door opened. Victor stepped into the dim room. His tailored suit cut a sharp silhouette against the ambient light spilling from the hallway.

"What are you hiding from me?" Edmund demanded.

He launched onto the offensive the second the door clicked shut.

Victor stopped in his tracks, his brow furrowing in confusion. There were business matters he kept from his father, but nothing that required such a dramatic interrogation. The financial reports were always available for review.

"Did you get married and have children behind my back?" Edmund pressed.

His voice echoed in the cavernous room, bouncing off the acoustic panels.

Milo, standing just outside the door frame, felt his jaw drop. The idea of his ruthless, workaholic boss harboring a secret family was preposterous. He stepped back into the hallway to give the two men privacy.

"No," Victor replied.

His tone was calm and even, devoid of any guilt.

"No? Look at this." Edmund snatched the remote from the console and aimed it at the large monitor. He hit the play button.

The screen flickered to life. The high-definition display showed the bright, lovely smiling faces of Mason and Sophie. They were laughing, their eyes sparkling with a mischievous energy that leaped through the lens. Their small hands waved at the camera, their voices ringing with youthful exuberance.

"Look for yourself. Do they look exactly the same as you?" Edmund asked.

His finger jabbed toward the digital display.

Victor approached the screen. He planted his feet on the carpeted floor and studied the two children. The shape of their eyes, the curve of their jaws, the unmistakable Crawford bone structure. He nodded, maintaining his expressionless facade, though his mind raced through a thousand possibilities. He was forced to admit the uncanny resemblance. They were carbon copies of his own childhood self.

"Have you asked Felix about this?" Victor suggested.

He subtly deflected the accusation toward his brother.

"Felix? How is that possible? The boy is either dissecting something in a lab or buried in a library! I worry he will never even look at a woman, let alone produce heirs!" Edmund scoffed.

He waved a hand in air, dismissing the notion immediately.

"Dad, I am also very busy. I live at the office."

"Then what is going on here?"

"Who are those two children? Why is this video of them playing in your viewing room?" Victor asked.

He shifted the interrogation back to his father, trying to regain control of the narrative.

"They are one of the five sets of twins who made it to the finals this time. They auditioned for the new series we are producing."

Victor stared at the frozen frame of Mason and Sophie. Deep suspicion took root in his chest.

"Dad, could it be that someone has ulterior motives in sending these children here? Someone trying to infiltrate the company?"

"Are they really not your children?" Edmund asked.

A glimmer of hope still clung to his words.

"No," Victor denied firmly.

His voice left no room for debate.

Disappointed, Edmund sighed and waved him off toward the exit. The grand revelation he had anticipated dissolved into another corporate mystery.

Victor turned and exited the viewing room. His mind swirled with the image of those two faces, searing them into his memory.

Left alone in the quiet room, Edmund leaned forward in his leather chair. He operated the remote, zooming in on Mason's face until the boy's features filled the entire monitor. As Edmund scrutinized the digital pixels, a new realization dawned on him. The boy shared Victor's dominant traits, but there was a softness in the brow, a specific angle to the smile that mirrored someone else. He realized the boy also shared traits with Felix. Edmund tightened his grip on the remote. He resolved to launch his own investigation into his younger son.

Back in the sprawling executive suite of the Crawford Group, Victor sat in his quiet office. The city skyline stretched out behind him through the floor-to-ceiling windows, but his attention was anchored to the thin file resting on his mahogany desk. He stared gloomily at Cora's background check. It was a pathetic excuse for an intelligence report. It was nearly empty.

Milo stood near the door, keeping his breathing shallow. After three days of intense investigation by their top intelligence team, they had unearthed a frustratingly small amount of data. The lack of information felt like an insult to their resources.

Victor flipped through the few printed pages. Cora Atwood was a prodigy in Valoria. She lost her mother at six. Her father remarried the same year, bringing Vanessa into the picture. She graduated university at twenty, joined Aura, and ascended to design director by twenty-one. At twenty-two, she fled the country. After that entry, her life abroad was a void. She had conquered the design world and won major awards under the alias Evelyn, but her real identity was heavily guarded by the senior executives at the VQ company. They had shielded her from the public eye with military precision.

Victor rubbed his eyebrows, applying pressure to the rising headache. He stared at the dates printed on the stark white paper. He began meticulously piecing together the highly suspicious timeline from exactly five years ago. The puzzle pieces were jagged, but they were beginning to form a picture that gnawed at his rational mind.

He went back to the beginning of the chaos. On May 5th, he attended a high-profile banquet and was mysteriously drugged. The potent substance had nearly compromised him. Milo had torn the city apart for a month trying to find the culprit, dragging suspects into interrogation rooms, but found nothing concrete. The only anomalous detail they discovered was that Vanessa had conveniently booked the room adjacent to his suite that night. She had been waiting in the wings.

On May 6th, Arthur Atwood was hospitalized in serious condition. The doctors cited a massive stress-induced cardiac event.

On May 7th, vicious scandals erupted across the Oakhaven media. The headlines claimed Cora was an illegitimate daughter. The tabloids spun a narrative that her scandalous behavior with an older man caused her father's heart attack. On that exact same day, she packed her bags and fled abroad.

Victor leaned over the desk. The sequential timing was too precise. It felt orchestrated. Leaving the country while her adopted father lay dying in a hospital bed made no logical sense for the woman he had observed over the past three days. The woman who just slapped Vanessa for a fabricated lie would not run from a tabloid rumor. The narrative Vanessa had spun for years was showing massive, structural cracks.

Victor opened his eyes. The gloom in his gaze hardened into sharp, dangerous resolve.

"Investigate the entire Atwood family history. Dig into everything. Leave no stone unturned," Victor ordered.

His voice cut through the silence of the office like a blade.

"And track those two children closely. I want to know their every move, where they live, and who brings them to the studio."

Milo swallowed his initial hesitation. He had assumed the Atwood family was a closed case, a known entity. He wanted to point out that investigating them might be a waste of resources, but the dark intensity on Victor's face silenced any objections. He nodded quickly. He turned and left the office to execute the orders, knowing better than to question the billionaire's intuition.

Alone again, Victor leaned back in his ergonomic chair. He was frustrated by the massive amount of trouble Cora had stirred in just three days. She was a hurricane tearing through his meticulously ordered life, leaving chaos, violence, and unanswered questions in her wake. The silent office did nothing to calm his racing thoughts. Seeking a distraction from the suffocating pressure, he picked up his phone and called his cousin, Carter Prescott.

"Hey, where are you?" Victor asked the moment the line connected.

At the local television station, Carter stood in a busy hallway, discussing a cooperation agreement with potential sponsors. He stared at his phone screen in pure disbelief. Victor never initiated casual contact. The man was an island of productivity.

"I am at the TV station. Shall we have dinner tonight?" Carter hurriedly replied.

He seized the rare opportunity to connect with the elusive head of the family.

Victor processed the offer. The thought of sitting in a restaurant making small talk suddenly felt exhausting. He abruptly hung up the phone without another word.

Carter listened to the dead dial tone, letting out a long, long sigh. He was used to the abrasive treatment. He quickly made a reservation at a high-end restaurant anyway and texted the time and location to his cousin, hoping Victor would show up.

The afternoon sun began its descent over the Oakhaven skyline, casting long shadows across the concrete canyons. For the first time since taking control of the Crawford Group five years ago, Victor left work early. He did not even realize the unprecedented nature of his departure. He steered his sleek Maybach through the bustling downtown traffic, his mind still tangled in the web of dates and missing information from the Atwood file.

As he waited at a red light near the commercial district, his sharp gaze caught a familiar figure walking down the crowded sidewalk. It was Cora.

Victor narrowed his eyes, tracking her movement through the sea of pedestrians. It was the middle of the afternoon. Prime company hours. He suspected her of slacking off, exploiting her new position to wander the city while her team worked on the upcoming collection. His jaw clenched. Had he been too lenient with her upon her return?

He slammed on the brakes, pulling the heavy Maybach into a shadowed alleyway just off the main avenue. The tires screeched softly against the pavement. He killed the engine and began trailing her from a hidden distance, letting the tinted windows conceal his presence from the street.

He watched as she pushed open the heavy glass doors of a flagship Aura retail store. He waited in the silence of the car. Ten minutes later, she emerged. She was clutching a specially designed jewelry bag bearing the distinctive company logo. She walked briskly to her parked car down the block, tossed the bag into the passenger seat, and drove off into the traffic.

Victor fired up the Maybach and followed. He maintained a safe distance, weaving through the lanes to keep her taillights in his line of sight. The purr of the powerful engine was the only sound in the cabin.

She parked near a second Aura store in the neighboring district. She repeated the routine. She pushed the door open, vanished inside the brightly lit showroom, and returned to her car with another jewelry bag.

The pattern continued. Store after store, she meticulously executed the routine. Victor drove through different districts of Oakhaven, matching her pace, watching her hit location after location. With each jewelry bag she collected, her face grew noticeably gloomier. Her delicate features tightened into a scowl. Her pace became more aggressive, her heels striking the pavement with deliberate force.

Victor sat in the driver's seat, the engine of his Maybach idling in a quiet parking lot across from her fifth stop. He watched her from the shadows, his hands gripping the leather steering wheel. He observed the mounting frustration on her face as she loaded another branded bag into her car and slammed the door shut.

He was a man who prided himself on solving the most complex corporate puzzles, yet he sat there, utterly bewildered as to what she was up to by buying so many pieces of her own company's jewelry.