Chapter Thirty-Six

After Stella and her mother dug out the original and fake deeds to the villa out of her father's safe kept in his home office, they thought it wise to hide it at Rose company headquarters in Jaden's office.

To Athena's surprise, the only reason she was able to figure this out, is the recording device planted in Alexi Madden's cellphone, Stella's mother. Gabriel said he was only going to plant one in Athena's father's phone and computer, not even thinking about the brilliant idea of planting one in Alexi's as well.

The thought had occurred to Athena in the past, before she had met Gabriel and his capabilities, and thought it too risky. The chances of her getting close to her father's devices and being left alone with them were much higher than that of Alexi and how close she keeps all of her personal belongings to her.

'So, how did Gabriel manage to get so close to her phone to plant a recording device?'

Too many unimaginable and wild thoughts enter her mind, blurring her judgement and focus of her goal today. As much as her family may own the company, her father has complete control and Athena in the past has never shown any interest or ambition towards anything other than her own career in the entertainment industry, meaning she has never had a reason to visit the company.

Since Athena and her father have never been that close either, visiting the company with the excuse to visit him for any reason would also seem suspicious, and her father would likely see right through it before she has the chance to make it past the receptionist. Even his own daughter has to check in with the receptionist, but Stella and her mother have always been treated with the same respect and authority as Jaden, the head of the company.

The moment Stella was welcomed into the family, Athena has always been seen as the daughter who abandoned her family for her own selfish reasons. Her father did nothing to defend her name and allowed his new family to slander his old as much as they wanted, as long as it didn't affect his reputation or threaten his standing in the company.

For this reason alone, Athena has always had her own suspicions that Stella is in fact her half-sister, her father getting Alexi Madden pregnant while he was still married to Athena's mother. Thus, prompting Alexi Madden to fake a traffic accident by hiring someone to drive into the car of Athena's mother hard enough to kill them both, covering all tracks of Alexi's involvement and leaving the police with no option to write it off as an accident.

Athena herself has tried looking into the incident and dig up any left over evidence and information the police didn't dig deep enough to find. But she quickly discovered that it was a planned murder-suicide. The who was behind the wheel of the other car was dying of a brain tumor and didn't want to leave his family with nothing, so he took the large sum of money offered to him to give to his family, before going out on his own terms.

When she tried looking into the family of the man, she came to a halting stop with all the firewalls and security systems. You can only access so much with the public access system and since Athena herself is no hacker, it would take years even for a regular hacker to get through everything, and that's with the heavy risk of jail time hanging over their head if they are ever caught.

That is also the only thing stopping her from asking Gabriel to help her, leaving it at a dead end. With the high risk alone, she has no doubt he would turn it down, regardless of his supposed feelings towards her or not. With the status and reputation he holds in the business world, it would be an even bigger risk for him, if caught his penalty could destroy everything Gabriel has worked to build.

Her only choice now is to bring down her father, Alexi's biggest support. Athena doesn't doubt she has many other suitors at her beck and call who are willing to do anything to help her out of a tough situation, even destroy themselves over it, but Athena's father is the only one with the influence and wealth attached to his name at the moment, that Alexi Madden is greedy for.

She went as far as to uproot an entire family and kill off a woman to gain her position as wife, just to secure herself and her daughter a high position in society, with the self-delusion that they have always been born to be granted these luxuries.

Because of this delusion, Athena only needs to remove the one big factor from her lifelong scheme to get rich, which is the rich man she has sunk her claws into. Once he no longer has the wealth and power she wants and has worked so terribly to get, what will she do then? Since she has devoted herself so wholeheartedly towards Jaden Rose and being a supportive wife who has nothing but love for him, she will have no choice but to go down with him and his reputation, tainting her own in the process.

Alexi Madden will never have the opportunity to crawl her way up the social ladder again once that happens, she will forever be looked at as a tainted failure. If she tries to leave Jaden Rose, she will be labelled a gold-digger and homewrecker, and be revealed for her true intentions in his eyes. If that happens, there is no way she will make it out of his grasp alive, or a penny to her name.

Alexi and her daughter Stella will be banished to the lower-class, with only the sliver of a chance to climb as far as the middle-class, if they learn the meaning of hard work.

"Miss Rose, you have been staring at the blank screen for a while. Is there anything I can assist you with?" Julian walks into the living room, smiling down at her as she slumps over the keyboard.

"I have too many thoughts in my head right now, Julian. I have almost everything I need, but I seem to have hit a wall that I can't seem to climb over or go around in any way."

He pulls over a chair and sits down next to her. "Would you mind sharing your thoughts with me? Maybe I can help think of a solution," he offers.

Julian has been working alongside Gabriel as his personal assistant for a long time, but Athena has come to realize he is more than a personal assistant. He has acted as a driver and bodyguard on several occasions and seems to possess high fighting skills and an even higher perception skill, having the ability to always assess every situation with ease and almost predict what a person might do next.

Maybe he can help her with this.

"My stepsister and her mother have moved the documents I have been trying to get to my family's company, but I have no reason to go over there without immediate suspicion from my father. I'm trying to think of a way to have his office searched, either in secret or under the disguise of looking for something else, to get my hands on the two deeds to the villa."

Julian seems to give it some thought for a second.

"Do you have a plan for after you get a hold of them?" he asks.

Athena nods. "I have already informed my family's lawyer, Mr. Collins, that there is in fact a fabricated deed for the property, and my father has both the fake and real deeds in his possession. Once I get them, I plan to bring them to Mr. Collins to observe and hold onto to enter into evidence when I finally bring my father down as CEO of Rose Group."

"So having a legitimate reason for obtaining these documents, would actually help your case when it comes to light. Correct?" Julian asks, titling his head up as if deep in thought again.

"Well, yes of course, but that idea is too far-fetched. My father has slipped up in the slightest in the company, if anything he has done a rather good job to my demise. But if the partners and shareholders of the company understood how much he has been embezzling from the company to fund his expensive and lavished lifestyle and new wife, they wouldn't sit still and allow him to continue running the company. My father has them in his pocket right now thanks to how much money he has made them, they've lost sight of their true values and would never listen to an uneducated little girl like me."

"Why have you not approached Mr. Monroe about this? I'm sure there are many ways he can help you."

Athena frowns and leans back in the chair. "Because I can't rely on him for everything, it isn't right and it's putting myself in a vulnerable position for the day he leaves."

Julian immediately opens his mouth to correct her, but instantly shuts it after, quickly realizing that no matter what he says in this moment, it will be futile. Athena Rose is a kind of woman who has been let down again and again, making it nearly impossible to shift her decision when she seems set on something.

'I'm sorry, sir, but you have your work cut out for you,' he thinks as he smiles hesitantly at Miss Rose, now lost in thought again. She is not blind to the advancements Gabriel has already made, but it's hard for to accept that his feelings are genuine, and he isn't just another person who is going to let her down or abandon her when she needs them most.

Julian knows better than anyone that once Gabriel is invested in something and shows genuine interest and care for another person, he will never betray or abandon that person unless they betray him first. As a close and personal confidant of Gabriel, Julian has had his fair share of mistakes and slip ups, but Gabriel has stood by and defended him every time, always choosing to believe in him.

He knows that Gabriel already holds Athena deep in his heart and no doubt has her held up on a pedestal in his mind. He just needs to prove it to her enough for her paranoid and disappointed mind to believe his feelings are real and he is someone she can put her complete trust into.

'I suppose there are ways I can help nudge him in the right direction.'

Leaving Miss Rose to her dwelling, he offers to make her something sweet to eat in hopes of lifting her spirit, keeping in mind to make a visit to Gabriel's office later, but deciding to give it one more go, to help push Miss Rose to approaching Gabriel herself.

"You know, Miss Rose, I overheard that Mr. Monroe was having a hard time dealing with some crooks in the casino, bullying the staff and other customers into handing over their winnings or falsifying cheating from others. He is having troubles recording their misdeeds within the finance books, while also trying to battle the cyber attacks online."

Miss Rose scrunches up her face in a way that says she is already thinking hard of a way to help solve this issue. Julian hides the triumphant smile on his face when she quickly falls into his trap. Though he isn't lying about the group of thugs that have been frequenting the casino lately, he knows Gabriel already has it handled and isn't that concerned over the issue.

But it is a good excuse for her to visit the office and hopefully speak with Gabriel. Once he realizes that she too has an issue she needs help with, he will try everything he can to get her to ask him for help, or willingly offer it himself. Julian hopes that with this, Miss Rose will learn to reach out and trust more when she needs the help and understand that she has someone who can help her achieve everything she ever dreams of, right in the palm of her hands.

"Why has he never said anything to me? How long has this been going on?" she asks.

"Not very long thankfully, and he probably didn't want to pressure you into doing more work while you try and figure out a way to deal with your family and your own personal achievements. You've had many difficulties dealing with your stepsister lately as well, he didn't want to intrude."

Gabriel has been giving her quite a few days off, even though she has hardly done any work to begin with, and he hasn't called on her for help at all lately. She thought it was because there wasn't much he can't handle, but it turns out he has just been keeping it from her so not to further burden her, since she is also refusing to reach out for help.

When you look at it that way, they really do seem like a perfect pair.

"Alright, I guess it wouldn't hurt to visit him in the office and see if there is anything I can do. I am supposed to be looking after the books, even though I've already lost the previous ones he gave me," she says and gets out of her chair to proceed getting ready for the day, still dressed in her pajamas from last night.

"If I'm being honest, Miss Rose, those books have already been found and the proper person punished. Mr. Monroe had planned to tell you when he got back from his business trip but as you know that night didn't really go as planned and he ended up coming back earlier."

"So, he has been waiting for the next best time to tell me, but once again doesn't want to further burden me, so he has just kept it from me."

Julian nods confidently, but stops when he realizes her tone was sarcastic, and he might have made a mistake admitting this.

Athena is slightly upset that it seems Gabriel has been keeping so much from her, but she can only expect that, with how much she has been keeping from him, not wanting to burden him either with her own personal dealings. It's only fair that if she is keeping him in the dark, that he does the same.

'Maybe I can lean on him just a little bit more. He has already gone out of his way and done a lot for me without asking,' she thinks as she glances at the heavy duty hacking and spyware system he has put together, just for her.

"Wait here, I'll go get ready and we can visit him at the office," she says to Julian and leaves to shower and get dressed.

While she is away, Julian decides to give Gabriel a call to give him a heads up that she will be arriving, in hopes to give him the opportunity to plan something for her arrival, but remembers he has a shareholder meeting this morning when he gets his voicemail. Julian leaves him a voicemail telling him everything instead and hopes he hears it before they arrive.

Athena is ready to go an hour later, and Julian has yet to hear anything from Gabriel. He has no ideas on how to stall her and just hopes for the best, not seeing what could possibly go wrong with her surprise visit.

Meanwhile, another visitor is on their way to Gabriel's office with a surprise of their own.