His Dangerous Love On Ice Chapter 112: Zane's Pov

It took less than three hours to figure out what stage one was.

I'd been sitting at my desk, staring at three monitors, waiting for Max to send me the intercepted calls. My leg was bouncing under the table. I couldn't sit still. Couldn't think straight.

And then my phone rang.

Leonardo. One of my men I'd planted on the board of directors at Hopkins Enterprise. Grayson Sinclair's company.

My stomach dropped before I even answered.

"Talk," I said, my voice clipped.

"We've got a problem." Leonardo's voice was tight. "An anonymous buyer just made an offer for a controlling stake in the company. The board's in chaos. Half of them want to sell, and the other half don't know what to do."

I closed my eyes. My jaw clenched so hard I thought my teeth might crack. "Who's the buyer?"

"That's the thing. It was anonymous at first, but I did some digging." He paused. "It's your father."

Of course it was.

Of fucking course.

My hand tightened around the phone. I could feel the anger building in my chest, hot and sharp, but I forced it down. I needed to think. Needed to confirm.

"Send me everything you have."

"Already done."

I hung up and pulled up the files Leonardo sent. Offshore accounts. Shell companies. Layers and layers of bullshit designed to hide the buyer's identity. But I'd seen this before. I knew my father's methods.

This was him.

And suddenly, everything clicked into place.

The text messages I'd been getting about Olive. The cryptic warnings. The last one I'd received during the game: "Can she trust you enough to save her?"

They weren't just taunting me. They were setting me up. Using my relationship with Olive as bait. And my father was right in the middle of it.

Stage one wasn't about me at all. It was about Grayson. About destroying the man my father had already ruined ten years ago. The man he'd made me take the fall for.

And now he was finishing the job.

But I wasn't a fool. This wasn't just about Grayson's company. This was bait. A trap designed to make me react. To make me expose myself.

They wanted me to fall right into it.

Or maybe they wanted to use me as the trap itself.

Either way, they knew exactly how important my relationship with Olive was. They'd been watching. Studying. Planning.

I picked up my phone and called my father.

He answered on the first ring, which slightly shocked me. My father never picked up that fast. Never sounded… cheerful.

"Hello, son."

His voice was light. Almost giddy. It made my skin crawl.

"You sound happy," I said, my voice cold as ice.

"Do I?" He chuckled, and there was something unnervingly triumphant in it. "Well, perhaps I have reason to be. It's shaping up to be quite an eventful week."

"Does this have anything to do with Hopkins Enterprise?"

Silence.

For a second, I thought he'd hung up. But then I heard him breathe, slow and deliberate, like he was savoring this moment.

"Son—"

Whenever he called me 'son' in that particular tone, it only meant one thing. He was about to lie. About to twist the truth just enough to make himself look innocent.

"The Hopkins company is falling apart," he said smoothly. "They weren't strong enough to weather your scandals. The stock has been declining for weeks. Seems the buzz between you and your little woman has finally died down, and now they've found a potential buyer. Would you really want to deny them the opportunity?"

I could picture him perfectly. Sitting in his office, that brutal pride in his eyes, that smirk that said he'd already won.

Yesterday, back at the game, when he'd warned me that Alonso was a threat, I'd actually thought he meant it. Thought maybe, for once, he was being genuine.

But now it was obvious.

He was working with Alonso. Or at least, he was part of whatever Operation Resonance was. Whether he was being used or whether he was actively involved, I couldn't tell yet.

But it didn't matter. The result was the same.

"So you decided to buy the company," I said slowly. "How? Last I heard, you were drowning in debt. All that gambling you've been hiding for years finally caught up with you. So where the hell did you get the money to buy shares from Grayson's board of directors?"

The line went quiet.

I'd hit a nerve. I could feel it through the phone.

My father didn't like being reminded that I knew his secrets. That while he'd been digging into mine, I'd been doing the exact same thing to him.

"How did you know about my gambling?" His voice was tight now. Defensive. Almost angry.

I didn't answer. My other phone buzzed. A message from Leonardo.

"This was just sent to the company's internal network."

I opened the attachment and felt my blood turn to ice.

Subject: THE TRUTH ABOUT HOPKINS ENTERPRISE

‘Want to know why your CEO is really losing his company? Want to know what he did ten years ago that's coming back to haunt him? Check your stock portfolios. Check the insider trading records. Check how many times Grayson Sinclair has manipulated markets for personal gain. This is just the beginning. More revelations coming soon.’

I read it twice. Then a third time.

My blood boiled. Every word, every sentence, every punctuation mark screamed my father's involvement.

This was exactly the kind of shit he would pull. Playing dirty. Spreading lies. Manipulating public opinion to get what he wanted.

"Oh, Williams," I said softly, my voice dangerously calm. "What have you done, Father?"