Chapter 186

While the host droned on about the change in protocol, I turned to Ashton. ‘Octavia told you?’ He nodded. ‘The Hadley guy works for a friend of mine. I asked him to look in it. Dubois took a payment. Six hundred thousand, wired two days ago. Offshore account. She’s the one who ordered everything. The sabotage, the switch-up, all of it came from her.’ I frowned. ‘I don’t even know her. Never met her before today.’ ‘She’s just the hired gun. Hadley only had enough time to find out about the payment but couldn’t trace the sender. It’s buried. Whoever did it knew what they were doing.’ ‘Huh. I wonder who it could be.’ But there was no time to dig into it at the moment. The host’s voice boomed. ‘The final score is in. First place goes to… Miss Mirabelle Vance!’ A staff member waved me back onto the stage. After the award-giving, we hit another snag. ‘Miss Vance, quick question—about the rights to your designs.’ A staff member, who’d probably been roped into this against her will, approached