"Because every time I get close, something happens. Sources disappear. Evidence gets corrupted. Two of my colleagues have been threatened. One was attacked." She paused. "I need someone with resources. Someone with access. Someone the foundation might not expect."
"You want me to be your inside man."
"I want you to be my partner." Isabella pushed the second folder toward him. "You know these people. You grew up with them. You understand how they think, how they operate. And after what Brooke did to you—"
"This isn't about revenge."
"It doesn't have to be." Isabella's expression softened. "It can be about justice. About all the people the Sterlings have hurt—the charities they've defrauded, the businesses they've destroyed, the lives they've ruined."
Ethan thought about the gala. The three hundred guests who had watched him being humiliated and done nothing. The way Brooke had assumed he was helpless—and the way he had let her, because he'd wanted to see how far she would go.
He thought about the moment he'd stood up. The shock on everyone's faces. The way Isabella had stayed by his side, not out of pity, but out of something else—something sharper, more purposeful.
"What's in the second folder?" he asked.
Isabella smiled. "Everything."
He opened it.
The next few hours passed in a blur of documents and revelations. The Sterling Foundation had been founded as a legitimate charity—a way for the wealthy to give back, to support the arts, to fund medical research. But somewhere along the way, it had become something else.
A front. A laundering operation. A way for people with too much money and too few scruples to move that money around without anyone asking questions.
"I found the first thread two years ago," Isabella said. "A hospital in Haiti was supposed to receive a shipment of medical supplies. Instead, the shipment was diverted—sold on the black market, the proceeds funneled back into the foundation's accounts. When I tried to investigate, I hit a wall. Every door was locked. Every source was compromised."
"Except me."
"Except you." She looked at him carefully. "You were inside the inner circle. You saw things—even if you didn't realize what you were seeing. A casual conversation. A document left out. A meeting you weren't supposed to attend."
Ethan thought back to the years he'd spent dating Brooke. The dinners with her parents. The weekends at their estate in the Hamptons. The way conversations would sometimes stop when he walked into a room.
He'd assumed they were just being polite. Or rude. Or distracted.
He hadn't realized he was being kept in the dark.
"What do you need me to do?" he asked.
Isabella leaned forward. "I need you to remember. Everything. Every conversation, every meeting, every strange comment or off-hand remark. I need you to write it all down."