Chapter 297
At noon, Angela returned to the Fox family estate from the hospital with Pete, her expression drained of energy.
“Mommy, is Daddy really that tired? He’s been asleep for two whole days already.”
Pete tilted his head up toward the upstairs bedroom, eyes full of innocent curiosity.
Angela paused for a moment, caught off guard by the question. Then she crouched down and gently ruffled his hair.
“Your daddy is just exhausted and needs to rest,” she said softly. “Things have been very chaotic at home lately. You have to be good, alright?”
Pete nodded seriously.
In his mind, “chaotic at home” could only mean one thing.
It must be that bad woman again—Khloe.
When he grew up, he would help his parents and make sure she could never hurt their family again.
Angela handed him over to the household staff before heading upstairs.
The past two days had been relentless. Arthur had woken briefly, but the aftermath of the cerebral incident had left him severely impaired—his speech still slurred, his condition unstable. Stella had barely slept, staying by his bedside through the night until she finally collapsed from exhaustion.
Now Alicia had returned from her confinement period and taken over hospital duties, allowing Stella to step away. Angela, in turn, had returned home to care for Pete, Lauren, and Trey.
Trey had not taken the situation well.
After Arthur’s collapse, he developed a high fever and was confined to bed for two days.
The Fox family was collapsing in real time.
And the cause of it all—Khloe—was tightening her grip on Fox Group.
She had secured massive outside investment and, in one decisive move, diluted the Fox family’s shares to below ten percent. Even if they liquidated every personal asset they owned, it still wouldn’t be enough to match the capital she had brought in.
At this point, the company would not just be lost.
It would be renamed.
The Fox family had become a joke in Goldmont City circles. Online criticism had not stopped for a single hour. No one was willing to stand with them anymore. To outsiders, this was simply the end of the Fox name.
But Angela knew the truth.
Khloe was not a victim in this story.
She was the one pulling every string.
A cold, ruthless woman who had turned everything upside down without hesitation.
“Trey…”
Angela stepped into the bedroom—but froze.
The bed was empty.
The sheets were tangled and half-thrown aside, and a medicine box lay overturned on the floor.
“Trey?”
She called his name repeatedly. No answer came.
A bad feeling rose instantly in her chest.
By the time she realized what might have happened, Trey was already gone.
…
He had driven straight to Fox Group.
The fever had only just subsided, and his body still felt weak, but he ignored it completely.
He knew Khloe was continuing her pressure on the company.
But what hurt more than losing the company—
Was the feeling that she was truly cutting him off.
Completely.
Cleanly.
Without hesitation.
Over the past two days, drifting in and out of fevered sleep, he had seen her again and again in his dreams.
Not the version of her he tried to remember in anger.
But the one from the beginning.
When everything had still felt possible.
She had once stood beside him without condition. She had given him warmth he had never experienced within the Fox family—steady, unwavering, unquestioning.
She had told him that as long as he didn’t let go, she would never leave.
And somehow, he had believed it.
Now that belief felt like a wound reopening.
He had told himself countless times that everything he did was for Angela, for the Fox family, for what was “right.”
But the truth he refused to admit was becoming harder to ignore.
Somewhere along the way, he had grown dependent on Khloe.
Too dependent.
By the time Trey reached Fox Group, the building was already in sight.
But security had changed.
His name—and Arthur’s—were already on the blacklist.
He stopped at the entrance.
And was not allowed inside.