The door to our war room burst open with a violence that sent papers flying and caused every person in the room to spin toward the sound. Alexandra Whitmore stood in the doorway like an avenging angel, but her usually perfect appearance was disheveled, her designer suit wrinkled, and her eyes held the wild gleam of someone who had lost everything and had nothing left to lose.

In her hand was a gun – not the elegant little pistol I might have expected from a socialite, but a serious military-grade weapon that suggested she had come prepared for war.

"Everyone out," she said, her voice steady despite her appearance. "Everyone except Evira. We have unfinished business."

Unfinished business. In my previous life, I had never learned what drove Alexandra Whitmore's hatred for me specifically. I had assumed it was simple corporate greed, the desire to acquire another company's assets. But the look in her eyes now suggested something far more personal.

"Alexandra," Damian said carefully, positioning himself between her and me, "whatever this is about, we can work it out. The markets have spoken. Your hostile takeover failed. There's no need for—"

"Work it out?" Alexandra's laugh was bitter and edged with hysteria. "You think this is about business? You think any of this was ever about business?"

She gestured wildly with the gun, and I saw Marcus slowly reaching for his phone, probably to call security. But Alexandra caught the movement and swung the weapon toward him.

"Don't. Everyone sits down, hands where I can see them, and nobody moves unless I say so."

The room complied, but I remained standing. If this confrontation was about me specifically, then I needed to face it head-on.

"What is this about, Alexandra?" I asked, keeping my voice calm and level. "If not business, then what?"

Her green eyes fixed on me with an intensity that was almost physical. "You really don't know, do you? You have no idea what you represent, what your very existence has cost me."

What my existence has cost her? This was definitely more personal than corporate rivalry.

"Enlighten me," I said.

Alexandra moved further into the room, keeping the gun trained on the group but her attention focused entirely on me. "Twenty-five years ago, your father destroyed my family. Charles Sinclair – the great financial wizard, the man everyone trusted with their money – was nothing but a common thief."

My father. I felt the world tilt slightly. My father had died when I was three years old in what I had always been told was a car accident. I barely remembered him, and my mother had rarely spoken about him except in the most general terms.

"I don't understand," I said honestly. "My father died in an accident when I was very young."

"An accident," Alexandra repeated mockingly. "Is that what your mother told you? That it was an accident when Charles Sinclair drove his car into the Hudson River rather than face federal charges for embezzling forty million dollars from the Whitmore Family Trust?"

Forty million dollars. The room spun around me as the implications hit. My father hadn't died in a random car accident – he had committed suicide to escape prosecution for financial crimes.

"That's impossible," I whispered, but even as I said it, pieces were falling into place. My mother's reluctance to discuss the past. The modest lifestyle we had lived despite supposedly having some family money. The way certain doors in high society had always remained closed to us despite my beauty and education.

"Forty million dollars," Alexandra continued relentlessly. "Money that was supposed to secure my family's future for generations. Money that Charles Sinclair stole and hid so well that even after his death, investigators could never recover it."

This is why she hates me. Not for anything I had done, but for sins my father had committed before I was old enough to understand what money even was.

"Alexandra," Damian interjected, "whatever Charles Sinclair did, Evira was a child. She can't be held responsible—"

"Can't she?" Alexandra's voice rose to a near-shriek. "Do you think it's a coincidence that she ended up married to the richest man in New York? Do you think it's an accident that she has access to financial resources that could easily repay what her father stole?"

She thinks I married Damian for his money to somehow make up for my father's crimes.

"I married Damian because I loved him," I said, though the words felt strange in light of everything that had happened.

"Love," Alexandra spat. "You married him because you're your father's daughter. A parasite who latches onto wealth that belongs to other people."

The accusation stung, partly because I couldn't entirely deny it. In my original timeline, I had been attracted to Damian's wealth and status as much as his personality. The naive girl who had walked down the aisle three days ago had been everything Alexandra accused her of being.

But I wasn't that girl anymore.

"You're right," I said quietly, and the admission seemed to surprise her. "The woman who married Damian three days ago was exactly what you describe. Someone who wanted the security and status that money could provide, without thinking too deeply about the cost."

Alexandra's grip on the gun loosened slightly, perhaps surprised by my honesty.

"But," I continued, "the woman standing here now is someone different. Someone who has learned that money without honor is worthless. Someone who has seen what greed and corruption can do to families, to businesses, to entire communities."

I took a step closer to her, ignoring the gasps from the team behind me.

"Someone who understands that the sins of our fathers don't have to define us."

"Pretty words," Alexandra said, but her voice had lost some of its earlier venom. "But words don't bring back forty million dollars. Words don't restore a family's reputation. Words don't undo twenty-five years of struggling to rebuild what your father destroyed."

Twenty-five years. I tried to imagine what it must have been like for Alexandra, growing up in the shadow of financial ruin, watching her family's social status crumble, fighting to rebuild an empire that had been stolen before she was old enough to protect it.

She's not just a villain. She's a victim who became a predator.

"You're right," I said again. "Words aren't enough. But actions might be."

I moved to one of the computer terminals, keeping my movements slow and deliberate so she wouldn't perceive them as threatening.

"What are you doing?" Alexandra demanded.

"Something I should have done the moment I learned the truth," I replied, accessing my personal banking information. "I'm transferring forty million dollars from my personal accounts to a trust fund designated for Whitmore family restoration."

Forty million dollars. It was almost exactly the amount that would be left from my trust fund after taxes and the various investments Damian had made on my behalf. But it was also the exact amount my father had allegedly stolen.

The room was dead silent except for the clicking of keys as I set up the transfer.

"This is a trick," Alexandra said, but her voice was uncertain.

"No trick," I replied, turning the screen so she could see the transaction details. "Forty million dollars, plus twenty-five years of compounded interest. Consider it restitution for Charles Sinclair's crimes."

Alexandra stared at the screen, and I saw tears beginning to form in her eyes. "You... you're really doing this?"

"I'm doing this," I confirmed, executing the transfer. "Not because I'm legally obligated to, and not because I'm afraid of your gun. I'm doing it because it's the right thing to do."

The gun in Alexandra's hand began to shake, and I realized she was crying in earnest now.

"I never wanted to be a criminal," she whispered. "I just wanted my family to have what was taken from us. I wanted to restore what we lost."

"I know," I said gently. "And now you can. The money will be transferred within the hour. You can rebuild your family's legacy the right way, without conspiracy and corruption."

Alexandra slowly lowered the gun until it was pointing at the floor. "What about the charges? The recordings, the evidence of market manipulation?"

That was the question I had been expecting.

"The financial crimes can be undone," I said. "The conspiracy charges... those are more complicated. But I think if you were willing to cooperate with federal investigators, to provide testimony about the other members of the conspiracy, there might be room for a plea agreement."

A plea agreement that would essentially make her our ally against Sterling and Ford.

"You would do that? After everything I've done to you, to your family?"

I thought about the woman who had died on her wedding night, killed by people she trusted in a conspiracy she never understood. I thought about the months of careful planning that had gone into my destruction, the cold calculation that had treated my life as nothing more than a obstacle to be removed.

"I would do that," I said, "because I believe people can change. Because I believe in redemption. And because the cycle of revenge and retaliation has to stop somewhere."

Alexandra dropped the gun entirely, sinking into one of the empty chairs as the weight of everything crashed down on her.

"I'm sorry," she said, looking directly at me. "I'm so sorry for what I tried to do to you. For what I became in pursuit of something that was never really yours to give."

And there it is. The apology I never got in my previous life, from a woman who had spent years planning my destruction.

"I forgive you," I said, and I meant it. "But more importantly, you need to forgive yourself. And then you need to use that forty million dollars to build something better than what came before."

As if summoned by some cosmic sense of timing, Morrison's phone rang with the distinctive tone he used for law enforcement contacts.

"That's the FBI," he said, glancing at the caller ID. "They've arrested Ryan Sterling and Senator Ford. They want to know if we're ready to provide testimony."

Alexandra looked up at me, her mascara streaked but her eyes clear for the first time since she had entered the room.

"What do I do?" she asked.

I smiled, feeling a weight I hadn't realized I was carrying finally lift from my shoulders.

"You tell the truth," I said. "All of it. And then you help us make sure this never happens to another family."