When Love Turns to Ash Novel – Chapter 14
Julian Vance basked in the spotlight.
The Harding empire now lay in his hands—pried from the fingers of a disgraced rockstar, smothered beneath scandal and forged documents. Through a labyrinth of offshore accounts and front companies, Julian had acquired Harding Industries for pennies. It was all perfectly legal on paper. The performance of a lifetime.
He stood at a gleaming podium, dressed in a custom midnight-blue suit, cameras flashing, microphones crowding the stage. His smile was charming. Empty.
“Jax Harding,” Julian intoned, voice oozing polished sorrow, “is a reckless, irresponsible individual. His fraudulent activities have shocked us all. I stand here, not to celebrate, but to rebuild. Under my leadership, Harding Industries will be restored to its former glory.”
The room hummed with staged applause.
And then—
A shrill sound. A reporter’s phone.
Held aloft, it began to play a recording.
Chloe’s voice.
“…when is Harding going to pay? I want him ruined!”
Julian’s voice.
“…Financial irregularities. Forged signatures. It will all trace back to him.”
Silence fell like a guillotine.
The playback continued—raw, damning, irrefutable. The conspiracy unraveled in real-time. The wolves—press, regulators, public opinion—scented blood.
Chaos erupted.
Julian went white.
“That recording is… It’s been doctored!” he stammered. “Chloe’s unstable! She manipulated me! I was protecting the company!”
Nobody believed him. Not with his voice blaring from the reporter’s phone, not with the smugness he’d just worn like cologne.
In a sun-drenched, too-white room, Chloe Davenport watched her empire collapse.
The psychiatric facility TV blared headlines:
“VANCE EXPOSED IN FRAUD SCHEME—AUDIO LEAK CONFIRMS CONSPIRACY”
“CHLOE DAVENPORT AT CENTER OF FINANCIAL SCANDAL—NEW LEAKS DROP DAILY”
Her burner phone, tucked beneath a floor tile, lit up with vitriol. Hate. Mockery. Her socialite name, ruined. Julian wasn’t answering. He’d disappeared.
He was leaving her to drown.
She snapped.
The nurses couldn’t stop her in time.
Chloe barricaded herself in the rec room, grabbed the communal landline, and dialed the biggest tabloid columnist in New York.
What followed was nothing short of legendary.
“I loved him!” she wailed over the airwaves. “He said we’d take it all! It was his idea to fake the pregnancy! It was his plan to frame Jax! I destroyed everything for him and he left me here!”
The media swarmed. It was messy. It was beautiful. It was Chloe’s unraveling, live-streamed for the world.
In a cheap motel room in Jersey, Jax Harding watched the implosion with a hollow expression.
He’d been the source of the audio leak—discreet, anonymous, but precise.
He’d given the authorities everything: emails, bank logs, text threads Ben had uncovered and sent him. It had taken weeks of clawing through what was left of his company’s servers, but he found enough to light the fire.
Arrest warrants followed.
Julian Vance was taken into custody in handcuffs. Securities fraud. Racketeering. Attempted corporate sabotage. The charges stacked high.
Chloe’s breakdown only sealed it.
Jax had won. On paper, anyway.
But he didn’t feel victorious.
Not with Savvy gone.
Not with every echo of her laughter reduced to ash in his memory.
And then came the fire.
Late one night, Chloe slipped past the orderlies during a shift change. She wore a volunteer’s smock and a serene expression.
She walked into Julian’s sleek new office—formerly Jax’s.
In her designer handbag: a jerrycan of gasoline and a box of matches.
Julian didn’t even look up from his desk.
“Chloe?” he said, startled. “What the hell are you—?”
She emptied the gasoline over the floor, the furniture, his imported wood-paneled walls.
He lunged for her. She lit the match.
“If I can’t have it,” she whispered, eyes shining with manic glee, “neither can you.”
She dropped the flame.
The explosion rocked the building.
Julian survived. Barely.
Burned, broken, unrecognizable, he was wheeled out on a stretcher as his stolen empire turned to ash behind him.
Chloe was arrested at the scene, grinning wildly, her arms singed, her mascara running.
This time, there would be no bail. No family favors. No redemption.
Only fire.
And ruin.
And silence in the wake of everything they destroyed.