The executive suite at Newman Enterprises was suffocatingly quiet, its stillness broken only by the distant hum of the city and Nikki Newman’s frantic search through Victor’s private drawers. The office—normally an emblem of power and stability—felt like a prison closing in on her. She knew she had no business being there, but the stakes were too high to walk away. Jack’s urgent warnings echoed in her head: Victor wasn’t just planning a business move—he was preparing a digital strike that could cripple Jabot forever.
Her hand brushed against a hidden flash drive beneath a pile of files stamped Project Goliath. The AI program Victor had repeatedly denied was real was sitting right in front of her. Her breath caught. “Why do you always push it this far?” she muttered, fingers shaking as she reached for the drive.
A deep voice rumbled from behind her. “Looking for something, my darling?” Nikki spun around to see Victor standing in the doorway, his tall frame cast in shadows. He didn’t look furious—yet. The disappointment on his face was somehow far worse. As she stammered for an explanation, the drive slipped from her fingers and hit the desk with a loud click.
Victor closed the door behind him deliberately, each step toward her controlled and unnervingly calm. He accused her of betrayal, of choosing Jack over her own husband. Nikki tried to defend herself, insisting she was trying to save him from a move that would destroy lives, not just the Abbott family business.
When Victor reached toward her—whether for her arm or the drive—her panic surged. The weeks of tension, the pressure of trying to stay sober, the fear from unrelated threats she’d been receiving… all of it snapped. Her hand shot to her purse. She pulled out the revolver she’d been carrying for protection.
“Stay away from me!” she cried, the gun trembling. Victor froze, stunned that she’d drawn a weapon on him. She begged him to stop the AI project. He stepped forward anyway, testing her resolve. “You’d shoot me—for Jack Abbott?”
Before she could react, he lunged—not to hurt her, but to disarm her. Her frayed nerves reacted before her mind did. Her finger spasmed on the trigger.
A single deafening blast filled the room.
Victor staggered back with a grunt, clutching his left shoulder as blood seeped through his suit jacket. Nikki screamed his name and dropped the gun. She rushed toward him, horrified and apologizing, her hands shaking too hard to apply pressure properly. Victor slumped into a chair, pain and betrayal etched across his face as he whispered, “You shot me.”
Nikki tried to explain it was an accident, but Victor wanted answers. He demanded to know whether she’d chosen Jack over him. She insisted she was choosing their family over his obsession. When she brought up the situation in Los Angeles—and Nick’s danger—Victor’s expression shifted. He hadn’t known she’d discovered that. For the first time, he looked wounded in a way that had nothing to do with the bullet.
Their confrontation escalated as she revealed she knew about Victor secretly managing crises behind her back—not just his war with Jabot. She accused him of controlling their lives through the AI program, of crossing moral lines he could never uncross. Victor accused her of believing she could stop him.
But then—something softened.
As he bled onto the floor, staring at his wife sobbing beside him, Victor finally recognized how far he had pushed her, pushed everyone. He ordered her to call emergency services—but to lie. She was to say it was a mishap, a gun-cleaning accident. Nikki stared at him in disbelief, realizing he meant to protect her even now.
The hospital quickly filled with Newman tension. Rumors spread. Suspicion rose. Nikki sat shaking in a waiting room chair, her hands feeling forever stained with Victor’s blood. Their children pressed her for the truth, but she refused to speak. When Victor finally stabilized, he summoned her alone. In that quiet hospital room, he admitted she had been right about Nick, about the danger, and even about his AI war going too far.
He told her he would halt the Jabot attack—temporarily.
But the peace was fragile. Victor vowed to investigate who else knew about the AI project. To him, the shooting had revealed a deeper betrayal. Nikki feared this was only the beginning.
Because even as she rested her head on his chest, relieved he would recover, she sensed the real battle was just beginning—the fight for the soul of Newman Enterprises.