Chapter 7 - The Cousin Who Knew Too Much
Elias Voss was the opposite of Harrison in every possible way.
Where Harrison was broad-shouldered, blond, and classically handsome in that boring, country-club way, Elias was lean, dark-haired, with a scar across his left eyebrow and eyes that looked like they missed absolutely nothing. Where Harrison had been handed everything on a silver platter and still managed to ruin it, Elias had walked away from the Voss fortune at twenty-five, moved to New York with $5,000 in his pocket, and built a renewable energy company now worth $2.4 billion.
He was also the only Voss who’d ever been nice to me.
We’d met once, briefly, at Harrison’s fortieth birthday party two years earlier. He’d showed up uninvited, drank Patricia’s most expensive scotch, told Harrison his latest real estate deal was “a disaster waiting to happen,” and then cornered me by the fireplace for twenty minutes while Harrison fumed across the room.
“You’re too smart for him,” he’d said, quietly, so no one else could hear. “Too sharp. Too alive. He’ll eat you alive if you let him. And from the look in your eyes… you’re not going to let him.”
He’d left before the cake was cut, and I hadn’t heard from him since.
Until now.
I walked into The Butcher’s Table at 6:58 AM. The restaurant was empty except for one table in the back, where a man in a well-worn leather jacket was reading the Wall Street Journal, a black coffee in front of him.
He looked up as I approached, a slow smile spreading across his face.
“Claire Bennett,” he said, standing to shake my hand. His grip was firm, dry, confident. “Even more impressive in person than you were on every news feed in America last night.”
I sat down across from him, sliding my coat onto the back of the chair. “Elias Voss. I almost didn’t believe you’d actually show up. I half-expected Harrison to jump out from behind the counter with a tape recorder.”
Elias laughed—a genuine, warm sound, nothing like Harrison’s sharp, barking laugh. “Harrison couldn’t find this place with a GPS and a map. He only eats at restaurants where the waiters know his credit card number by heart.” He signaled the waiter. “She’ll have the same as me. Eggs over easy, sourdough, extra bacon. And a latte. Strong.” He turned back to me. “You look like you need it. Gala nights, public takedowns of your ex-husband… they take a lot out of you.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You’ve been keeping tabs.”
“Of course I have. I’ve been waiting for this since the day Harrison announced you were engaged. I knew you were the one who’d finally take them down. I just didn’t realize you’d do it so… thoroughly.” He paused, stirring his coffee. “Though I will admit, I didn’t see the $120 million tech company coming. That was a nice touch. Harrison still hasn’t recovered from the valuation number, by the way. My sources tell me he threw his TV out the window when the revised number came out.”
I smiled. “Good. I aim to please.”
The food came. We ate in silence for a few minutes, the comfortable kind of silence you only get with people who see you, really see you, without needing an explanation.
“So why are you here, Elias?” I said finally, wiping my mouth with a napkin. “You didn’t fly in from New York just to buy me breakfast and compliment my revenge strategy. What do you want?”
He leaned back, crossing his arms. “Straight to the point. I like that. Okay. Two things. First—Harrison and my aunt Patricia. They’re not done. I know you think you’ve won, and for the most part, you have. But desperate people do desperate things. And Harrison is very desperate right now. He’s lost the company. He’s lost the social standing. He’s lost every penny of his own money paying lawyers. The only thing he has left is the hope that he can take you down with him. And he’s got one card left to play that you might not know about.”
I frowned. “What card?”
“Lila. His executive assistant. The one he’s been sleeping with for four years.” Elias pulled a folded document from his jacket, sliding it across the table. “She’s pregnant. Ten weeks. Harrison found out three days ago.”
I stared at the paper—a copy of a positive blood test, a doctor’s note, all dated two weeks after the divorce was final.
“Harrison’s plan,” Elias continued, “is to file a paternity suit. Claim the child was conceived before the divorce. That you knew about the affair, that you deliberately hid assets knowing there would be a child entitled to support. He’s going to argue that the prenup doesn’t apply when there’s a minor child involved. He’s going to ask for millions in retroactive child support, plus ongoing payments that will bleed Aetheris dry. And he’s going to play the victim card again—poor single father, evil ex-wife hiding money from a baby.” He paused. “It’s weak. It’s probably not going to hold up in court. But it’ll take years to fight. Years of depositions. Years of headlines. Years of your name tied to Harrison Voss and his mistress and their baby. And that’s exactly what he wants. He doesn’t care if he wins. He just cares that you lose.”
I sat back, processing. A baby. Of course. It was the one thing I hadn’t planned for. The one card that could keep Harrison in my life forever, no matter what I did.
“And the second thing?” I said, my voice steady.
Elias’s face softened. “The second thing is an offer. Aetheris is about to IPO. You’re going to be a billionaire—paper billionaire, at least, by the end of the month. But with that comes… attention. The wrong kind of attention. Activist investors. Corporate raiders. People who want to take what you built, the same way Harrison did. I’ve been watching Aetheris for a year. The tech is brilliant. The team is solid. The market is yours for the taking. But you need a partner. Someone who knows how this world works. Someone who’s been through an IPO, who’s fought off hostile takeovers, who doesn’t care about the Voss name or Minneapolis society or any of the garbage that’s been dragging you down.”
He leaned forward.
“I want to invest. Not as a Voss. As Elias. I want to put $40 million into Aetheris at the IPO price. No strings. No board seat unless you want one. Just… backup. Money. Connections. Protection. And in return… I get to watch my cousin’s face when he realizes the only Voss who ever mattered is now your partner.”
I studied him for a long minute.
$40 million.
Connections.
Protection.
And a partner who actually respected me.
“Why?” I said finally. “Why would you do this? You’re a Voss. Why help me destroy your own family?”
Elias’s smile faded. “Because they’re not my family. Not really. My father was Harrison’s father’s younger brother. The smart one. The one who didn’t want to spend his life cheating people out of their land and stealing from charities. He left the family business when I was five. Moved us to New York. Started over. And every time we came back to Minneapolis for holidays… Harrison and Patricia treated us like we were trash. Like we’d failed because we didn’t lie and cheat and steal our way to the top. When my dad got sick—pancreatic cancer, seven years ago—we called them. Asked for help. For a recommendation to a specialist. For anything. They didn’t even return the call. He died six months later.”
He paused, his voice tight.
“So no. They’re not my family. They’re just… people who share my last name. And watching them get exactly what they deserve? It’s the best thing that’s happened to me since my dad died.” He held out his hand across the table. “Partners?”
I looked at his hand. Then I looked at the paternity test on the table between us. Then I thought about Harrison, on his knee at the gala, begging me to take him back while his mistress was pregnant with his baby.
I smiled.
“Partners,” I said, shaking his hand.
His grip was firm. Warm. Solid.
“Good,” he said, pulling his hand back. “First order of business: the Lila problem. I’ve already had my people talk to her. She’s twenty-four. She’s scared. Harrison has been telling her if she doesn’t go along with his plan, he’ll take the baby away from her, that his family’s lawyers will destroy her. She doesn’t want to fight you. She just wants… security. For her and the baby.”
I thought about it. I hated Lila. Hated that she’d slept with my husband for four years right under my nose. Hated that she’d known exactly what he was doing to me and said nothing. But she was also just a kid. A kid Harrison had manipulated, the same way he’d manipulated everyone else in his life.
“What does she want?” I said.
“$500,000. A trust fund for the baby. Full custody. And a signed agreement that Harrison has no parental rights, no visitation, no anything to do with either of them. In return… she testifies against him. Everything. The affair. The plans to frame you for your parents’ death. The embezzlement from the foundation. Everything. She signs an affidavit. She testifies in court. She goes on the record. And Harrison goes to prison.”
I stared at him. “You’re serious.”
“Dead serious. She’s already agreed. She just needs to hear it from you. That you won’t come after her. That the baby will be taken care of. That you’re not the monster Harrison says you are.”
I thought about it. For a long time.
$500,000 was nothing to me now. Less than nothing. A rounding error on the IPO.
And in return… Harrison was gone. Forever. No more lawsuits. No more paternity claims. No more threats. No more Voss family drama hanging over my head for the next eighteen years.
“Set it up,” I said. “Tomorrow. My lawyer’s office. All three of us. Elena drafts the papers. If she signs everything, tells the truth, and testifies… she gets the money. The trust. Full custody. And my word that I will never, ever come after her or that child. They can live wherever they want. Do whatever they want. I want nothing to do with any of it.”
Elias nodded, pulling out his phone to send a text. “Done. And Claire?”
“Yeah?”
“For what it’s worth… you’re making the right choice. The baby didn’t ask for Harrison as a father. It doesn’t deserve to be a pawn in his war.”
I looked out the window at the morning sun coming up over the city. He was right. The baby was innocent. And for all the things I hated Harrison for… I would never punish a child for his father’s sins.
“One more thing,” Elias said, putting his phone down. “The gala video. It went viral. Really viral. Over two hundred million views in twelve hours. You’re getting offers. Book deals. Speaking engagements. A Netflix documentary. And one very interesting offer from the White House. They want you to speak at the Women in Business summit next month. Alongside the President.”
I blinked. “The White House?”
“Yep. Seems the First Lady is a fan. She watched the gala speech last night. Called her chief of staff at midnight. Said you were ‘exactly the kind of woman this country needs more of.’” He grinned. “So… you want me to tell them yes?”
I laughed, picking up my latte. “Tell them hell yes.”
By the end of the week, everything had changed.
Lila came to Elena’s office, signed the papers, gave her affidavit—seven hours of testimony, detailing every single thing Harrison had ever done, every threat, every plan, every lie. She cried through most of it. She apologized to me, over and over, for not speaking up sooner. I told her it was okay. Told her to take the money, take the baby, and build a good life. She left that afternoon with a cashier’s check and a new identity, courtesy of Marcus’s people, somewhere far away from Minneapolis.
The FBI picked up Harrison at his apartment at six the next morning. He was still in his pajamas, drunk, when they cuffed him. Conspiracy to commit fraud. Witness tampering. Attempted extortion. Embezzlement (thanks to Lila’s testimony confirming Patricia had been stealing from the foundation and Voss Real Estate for years, with Harrison’s full knowledge and participation). The list went on and on.
Patricia was arrested an hour later, at the country club, while she was having lunch with her remaining friends. She screamed the entire way to the squad car, threatening to have everyone fired, to sue the city, to call her “powerful friends.” None of her powerful friends answered their phones.
Elias’s $40 million investment closed. Aetheris’s valuation jumped to $180 million overnight. The IPO was oversubscribed twenty times. The roadshow in New York was a triumph—every investor in the country wanted a piece of the company built by the woman who’d taken down the Voss empire.
And the night before I was supposed to ring the opening bell at NASDAQ, Elias took me out to dinner in Manhattan, at a tiny Italian restaurant in the West Village he’d been going to since he was a kid.
We drank expensive wine. We ate pasta that made me want to cry. We talked about everything—Aetheris, the future, our parents, the strange, twisted road that had brought us together.
“You know,” Elias said, halfway through dessert, leaning back in his chair, watching me with those dark, knowing eyes. “Harrison’s in jail now. Patricia’s in jail. The Voss name is effectively dead. Aetheris is about to be worth more than the entire Voss fortune ever was. You’re speaking at the White House next month. You have more money, more power, more freedom than most people could ever dream of.” He paused, a small smile playing on his lips. “What do you want now, Claire Bennett? What’s left?”
I looked at him across the candlelit table—this man who’d walked into my life at exactly the right moment, who’d seen me, who’d believed in me, who’d never once tried to control me or make me smaller.
I thought about the girl I’d been five years ago—broken, grieving, alone, marrying a man who’d promised to take care of her because she’d been too scared to take care of herself.
I thought about the woman I was now.
May you like
And I smiled.
“Everything,” I said. “I want everything.”
