Chapter 20: Breaking Down

Catherine’s stomach churned. Even standing in front of Maximilian hadn’t made her feel this unsettled, this contaminated.

What did I ever see in him? she thought bitterly. He isn’t even handsome. Just… hollow, cruel… and greedy.

How blind was I?

Without another word, Catherine opened her purse and laid everything out on his desk.

Time-stamped drafts. Emails. Correspondence. Data logs. Revision histories.

Proof.

Cold, methodical, and undeniable proof that she had worked on it herself. She met his gaze without flinching.

Jonathan gulped seeing the copies on his desk.

“I am,” she said quietly, “the sole owner.”

Her lips curved to a slow smirk.

Jonathan didn’t raise his voice.

He stood instead and closed the office door carefully. The soft click echoed far louder than a slam ever could.

Catherine’s fingers trembled slightly, to be in a locked room with a man… especially after what happened at the restaurant… But she took in a deep breath and clutched her purse closer.

“You’re very confident,” he said, returning to his chair and folding his hands. “That usually means you’ve spoken to a lawyer.”

Catherine took a deep breath to gather herself. “The research is mine. The contract is clear.” She did have her gun.

Jonathan smiled. Not cruelly. Not mockingly.

Almost kindly.

“Ownership,” he said, “is not authorship. And authorship is not power.”

He slid a folder across the desk.

It wasn’t evidence. It wasn’t correspondence.

Just the printed symposium program—the glossy, official one already circulating, already archived. Her name sat neatly beside another.

Renfield.

Permanent. Immutable.

“You presented under Helios Biotek,” Vale continued, his tone conversational. “Using Helios funding. Helios facilities. Helios supervision.” He tilted his head. “You don’t get to pretend you were alone simply because you were brilliant.”

“My contract—”

“—protects your data,” Vale interrupted smoothly. “Not your career.”

He leaned back, crossing one leg over the other.

“If you contest this, Helios will initiate a review,” he said mildly. “Collaborations will be… reinterpreted. Recommendations will soften. Journals will hesitate. Grants will quietly disappear.”

Catherine felt her jaw tighten, the muscles aching as she forced herself not to react.

Jonathan watched her with something like patience.

“You’ll still be right,” he said gently. “Morally. Legally, perhaps.”

Then he smiled again.

“You’ll just be unemployable.”

Catherine’s hands curled into fists at her sides. She understood exactly what he meant. Even if she won in court, even if she proved beyond doubt that every line of that research belonged to her, she would still lose. She would be blacklisted. Quietly. Efficiently. Because she did not possess the kind of last name that opened doors in academia.

Unemployable…

The word settled between them like a verdict already signed. She exhaled slowly.

Academia, she realized, was not so different from the court of her former life.

Here, her name brought her nothing but scrutiny.

She might be wealthy, but she was an outsider—a merchant with gold but no pedigree. A guest permitted inside the halls, never meant to rule them. In another life, her name alone had ended arguments before they began. It had bent spines, silenced rooms, summoned obedience even from those who loathed her.

Wealth without lineage.

Talent without sanction.

The truth crystallized with brutal clarity: brilliance did not govern this world, the academic world she wanted to be part of.

Permission did.

And she had walked in believing merit would be enough.

The door opened before she could speak. Her spine stiffened.

Dr. Ashley Renfield entered with practiced warmth, with her heels clicking softly, smile already assembled. Her eyes flicked once to Catherine. Measuring. Dismissing. Then they moved to Jonathan Vale, approval settling easily into place.

“Ah,” Ashley said pleasantly, as if she were stepping into a luncheon rather than a battlefield. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”

Jonathan gestured to the chair beside Catherine. “We were just clarifying authorship.”

Renfield’s smile widened, polished and bloodless. “Of course. These things can be confusing for early-career researchers.” She turned to Catherine. “You should be proud. Helios rarely elevates work this promising.”

Elevates.

Catherine scoffed.

As though I am cargo.

Then Ashley’s gaze dropped… to Catherine’s coat, to the fall of the fabric, to the buttons.

She didn’t need to see the label. No one crafted buttons like that anymore.

Except one house.

Her eyes widened, disbelief flashing naked across her face.

“Where did you thrift Laurent Noir?” Ashley asked, incredulous. A brittle laugh followed. “Are those South Sea Pearls? Don’t tell me you’re forced to wear cheap imitations now.”

That had to be it. There was no universe in which someone like Catherine Preston, the ranch girl, owned the crown jewel of haute couture. It’s not just the price. Laurent Noir just didn’t sell to anyone. They had standards.

Catherine scoffed and stepped aside just as Ashley’s fingers twitched toward her pearls.

“One does not thrift haute couture,” she said coolly, disgust flickering across her features. “And imitation is an insult to the craft.”

She hated how Ashley weighed human worth by fabric and thread, how she reduced people to labels she thought only she was entitled to wear.

Ashley clenched her jaw and took a step back, confusion warring with irritation.

Because no matter how she turned it in her mind, no matter how much she wanted it to be false… She couldn’t understand how someone like Catherine could possess Laurent Noir.

And worse… How she could wear it as though it belonged to her.

“I’m looking forward to refining the paper,” Renfield continued lightly. “Adding context. Direction. Institutions prefer coherence.”

Her gaze lingered on Catherine, soft as velvet, sharp as a blade. “You’ll learn how these things work.”

Catherine clenched her jaw.

Ashley wasn’t threatening her. She wasn’t even hiding it. She was informing her calmly and graciously, that the work would be reframed, absorbed, and released under a better name.

Would it stand legally? No. Catherine had proof. Time-stamped files. Emails. Draft histories. Plagiarism would not survive a courtroom.

But the law was not where this war would be fought.

By the time a court ruled in her favor, academia would already have decided the story: a difficult nobody trying to stake a claim on Renfield territory. A young researcher with ambition mistaken for entitlement. The Renfield name would carry that narrative effortlessly, and the institutions would rally behind it.

By the time Catherine won, it would be too late.

Too late to publish.

Too late to collaborate.

Too late to belong.

Catherine saw her choices with brutal clarity.

Strike now.

Or…

Let it go.

She could strike now, before Ashley’s publication. It was risky, loud, and righteous… And she’d lose her future in research entirely. Or, she could let go, and preserve her career. She could swallow the theft for a quiet survival. A bitter loss.

Catherine stood there, suspended between ruin and silence, weighing which kind of death she could endure.

“You’ll be paid handsomely,” Jonathan said, as if he were offering mercy.

A hollow scoff escaped her before she could stop it.

Money.

As though that

were what she had fought for.

She had billions to her name. More than enough to live ten lifetimes in comfort. If she asked, her brothers would hand her their inheritance without hesitation. Wealth had never been scarce in her life.

But credit was.

What she wanted… what she had earned… was her name.

Her name, attached to the work she had bled for. Her name, standing where it belonged.

Why can’t I have what I deserve?

The question echoed painfully, familiar as an old wound splitting open. Her eyes clouded and her heart thumped painfully in her chest.

In her past life, she had worn a crown. She had held power so vast that nations bent beneath it, and yet none of her achievements were ever hers. Every decision required permission. Every victory belonged to the court, to her husband, to tradition. She ruled, and yet she was voiceless.

She had never blamed anyone for it. That was simply how the world had been. But it had scarred her all the same.

And now… this life was supposed to be different.

This world preached equality. Women had voices here. Choices. Freedom. Her family shielded her, supported her, and indulged every ambition she dared to voice.

And yet…

Even with all her wealth, all her freedom, all her brilliance…

She still couldn’t protect the one thing she had built with her own hands.

Just like before.

Just like how she couldn’t protect her son’s life in her previous life, no matter how powerful she was, no matter how desperately she tried.

The realization crushed her.

Tears welled in her eyes, blurring the room, the faces, the smug certainty of those standing before her. She bit down hard, trying to keep them from falling, but grief was heavier than pride.

Why is it never enough? Why am I always allowed to create, but never to keep? Why does everything I love have to be taken from me, dressed up as “reasonable,” “inevitable,” “how things work”?

She wiped the tears slipping free, hot and silent.

Why?

The question broke in Cahterine’s chest, unanswered… just like it always had.

Ashley’s lips curved.

Cry, she thought viciously. Cry and run. You don’t deserve anything.

Then…

A shadow fell across the doorway.

It wasn’t subtle. It wasn’t polite.

It was vast.

Catherine looked up.

There he was…

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