Chapter 1

My flight to London was supposed to leave in two hours.

I found out at the gate that my first-class seat had been canceled.

I called my assistant, and he stumbled over every word.

"Ms. Kensington, I booked you the earliest first-class departure, but Preston's new assistant — Genevieve — flagged it as unnecessary extravagance and switched it to a red-eye economy seat. Four hours later."

I didn't say anything for a moment. Then I started asking questions.

What I learned made my blood run cold.

Ever since Genevieve Laurent walked into Kensington Enterprises, she'd been on a crusade.

She killed the office espresso machines.

She axed the catered Friday lunches.

She slashed overtime Uber stipends down to nothing.

People were coming out of pocket just to show up and do their jobs.

The complaints from the floor had been building for weeks.

Furious, I bought my own ticket, flew to London, closed the billion-dollar acquisition, and called Preston the moment I landed back on the tarmac.

He brushed me off. "Genevieve is only trying to cut costs. She means well. You should actually be thanking her."

I laughed. I genuinely laughed.

"If she's so focused on saving money," I said, "then I'll save even more — I'll fire both of you and cut two salaries at once."

The line went dead.

Preston had hung up on me.

I stared at my phone. The broke, disgraced son of a collapsed Wall Street dynasty — and he had the nerve to hang up on me.

Three years ago, his father's firm imploded overnight. The man jumped from the fourteenth floor.

Preston had nothing left but a faded last name and an agreement my grandfather had made with his.

Out of respect for the dead, I honored it. I brought him into the company, gave him a VP title, and let him rebuild whatever was left of his pride.

This was how he paid me back.

I booked the next flight home and opened my company Slack.

What I found there was worse.

One thread after another. My employees, venting in a channel they thought I never checked.

"Genevieve literally stood over me while I printed contracts and counted the pages. I reprinted one sheet by accident and she docked $200 from my paycheck."

"No more Uber reimbursement after 9 PM. I've been splitting cabs with strangers to get home."

"Sales team is done. She capped client dinners at $15 per person. You can't close a seven-figure deal over McDonald's."

Kensington Enterprises wasn't just a company. My grandfather built it from nothing over fifty years ago.

Three generations of my family had poured everything into it — and the reputation we'd earned, with clients and employees alike, was the one thing money couldn't manufacture.

People trusted the Kensington name. That trust took decades.

And Preston was letting this woman burn it to the ground.

And then I found the one that stopped me cold.

Preston and Genevieve had expensed a full week in Aspen — a "ski resort feasibility study."

Presidential suite. Private instructor. Michelin-starred dinners every night. Total damage to the company account: well over $200,000.

And buried in the line items, charged to the company emergency fund — a $150,000 Bvlgari necklace.

He used my money to buy jewelry for another woman.

I closed my laptop.

The flight home was eleven hours.

I didn't sleep for a single minute of it.

The rage started as something almost laughable — my own fiancé, my own money, my own company. The sheer absurdity of it.

By the time the wheels touched down in New York, I had made up my mind.

Every single person who had played me for a fool was going to pay for it.