My Husband Secretly Played Daddy to His Mistress's Kid?Time to Destroy Them For My Daughter! - Chapter 97: Chapter 97

Gideon was on his knees on the wet asphalt, watching that black sedan speed away into nothing.
Rain mixed with blood from his forehead, trickling into his mouth—metallic and fucking bitter.
He tried getting up, stumbled after the car for maybe ten feet, then ended up leaning against a streetlight.
His phone started buzzing.
"Mr. Alden!"Jasper sounded like he was having a breakdown. "We're totally screwed! Wilson Group just pulled out of everything, and the other suppliers are bailing too! The board's demanding you get back here right now!"
Gideon wiped the rain and blood off his face, eyes going dead cold. "Lincoln's acting?"
"...Can't prove it yet."
He laughed, but there was nothing funny about it, and hung up.
Who the hell else would coordinate this shit so perfectly except Thorne?
In the Alden boardroom, the shareholders had completely lost their minds.
"Twenty billion in market value gone in three fucking days! Gideon, you better have some answers!"
"Wilson was our anchor client, and now they've jumped ship to Lincoln. You realize we're dead in the water?"
Gideon sat at the head of the conference table, face like stone while they ripped him apart.
His hair was a disaster, stuck to his forehead with sweat, but his stare could put someone in the morgue.
Vice Chairman Marcus Levis slammed this thick stack of reports down. "Mr. Alden, after sitting through all this bullshit, maybe you could enlighten us poor bastards with an explanation?"
Gideon's mouth twisted into this ugly smirk. "Uncle Marcus, you weren't this tough when you were begging my father for investment money."
"You arrogant piece of shit!"Marcus rocketed out of his chair. "The only reason anyone's put up with your god complex is out of respect for your father! Now you've torched the whole company over some piece of ass..."
"You finished?" Gideon waved him off. "Cool, my turn."
The projector flickered on, filling the screen with financial data.
"Lincoln's been playing a trick half past a year. Shell companies buying up our loose shares, shorting us on the secondary market, and now they're stealing our biggest accounts—"
Marcus whipped out another folder. "And what about this shit? You raided project funds to cover your margin calls! Now we can't even scrape together the deposit for the renewable energy contract!"
Gideon's eyes went wide.
"Gideon." Marcus pulled off his glasses, his voice suddenly sounding tired as hell. "Your father made me promise to watch out for you, but this..." He shoved a legal document across the table. "The board voted. You're out!"
The room went dead silent. Then Gideon just fucking exploded.
He flipped the entire conference table, sending papers flying everywhere, then grabbed Chen by the throat and slammed him against the floor-to-ceiling windows.
"I built this empire! You worthless parasites don't get to—"
"Because you've lost your damn mind!" Marcus was choking but still screaming. "Look down there!"
Gideon automatically looked. There was this angry mob gathered outside the building, holding signs that said "Alden PAY YOUR DEBTS" in giant red letters.
The next few weeks, Gideon turned into this non-stop machine.
Days were spent flying all over the country, trying to salvage client relationships;
Nights hunched over his laptop, looking for any weakness in Lincoln's armor.
But every time he tried to track down Marina, weird "accidents" kept happening.
His plane would land and these masked guys would jump him in some alley, breaking a couple ribs.
The PI he hired in New York? His office mysteriously caught fire the day after he found a lead.
Even the hacker he paid to break into Lincoln's systems just vanished after he actually got in.
The really fucked up part was after every beating, he'd get this anonymous text:
*Your right hand is next.*
Pure provocation.
Gideon destroyed everything in his office that could be broken.
"THORNE FUCKING LINCOLN!" he screamed at the walls.
His phone buzzed with a bank alert.
*Your all personal accounts have been frozen.*
Gideon hit the elevator button for the roof, laughing like a maniac, but right as the doors opened, his phone rang. The caring home. "Mr. Alden, your father saw the bankruptcy news and... he took his whole bottle of pills."
The phone hit the floor.
He stumbled to the edge of the roof. Across the city, Lincoln Industries' tower was catching the sunset, its glass walls reflecting light that reminded him of years ago—Marina laughing in the first snow, tiny flakes sparkling on her eyelashes.
Three months later, Alden Corporation finally collapsed.
The day they repossessed headquarters, Gideon stood across the street watching workers take down the gold company logo.
The business empire that used to own half the city was now just a bunch of shit waiting to get auctioned off.
Jasper nervously held out a debit card. "Mr. Alden, I've got about two hundred dollars saved up..."
Gideon didn't take it. He walked into the rain, looking like he'd aged twenty years overnight.
In some roach motel on the wrong side of town, Gideon was shaving with a disposable razor in front of a cracked mirror.
The guy staring back looked like a homeless vet—hollow eyes, patchy beard, zero resemblance to the golden boy he used to be.
The shitty TV was running financial news.
*Lincoln Industries CEO Thorne Lincoln married Marina Everlyn, heiress to the Everlyn fortune who vanished six months ago. Sources confirm the newlyweds purchased a private South Pacific island as their wedding present...*
Gideon's hand shook and the razor sliced his cheek open.
The feed cut to wedding footage—Marina in this gorgeous flowing dress, beaming as she walked arm-in-arm with Thorne.
When he leaned down to kiss her, the joy in her eyes was something Gideon had never fucking seen before.
*CRASH!*
The TV exploded into a million pieces. Gideon collapsed on the moldy carpet, laughing hysterically until the laughter turned into these broken sobs.
Outside, it was pouring like the world was ending.
Next morning, the motel manager found the door hanging open and his guest gone.
On the other side of town, some beat-up fishing boat was heading out to sea.
On deck, Gideon stared at the horizon disappearing into gray nothing, his eyes completely empty.