Sharon Watts never expected that a routine financial review would detonate the calm she’d worked so hard to rebuild at the start of the new year, but the moment she scrolled through the latest expense reports, her pulse began to hammer, because something—no, several things—were very, very wrong, and as she leaned closer to the screen in her office at The Boxing Den, she saw a string of monthly transfers flowing out of her company accounts to a consultancy she didn’t recognize, a generic-sounding firm that, on paper, handled “logistical services,” but the numbers were too precise, too regular, too carefully disguised to be random mistakes, and that was when her stomach dropped, because the only person who had recently been handling shared administrative tasks, invoices, and side projects was Lauren Branning, smiling, earnest, apologetic Lauren, who had practically begged Sharon for the job when she was struggling to stay afloat after returning to the Square, and Sharon—softened by her motherly instinct, her own history of bad choices, and a desire to see Lauren land on her feet—had agreed without hesitation, never imagining that Lauren would be the one to slip a knife between her ribs financially, but as she dug deeper, cross-referencing receipts and dates, a picture began to take shape: Lauren had created a fake vendor, funneled money into the shell company, and then quietly transferred it again into an account tied to her own name through a maze of digital steps she clearly thought nobody would ever bother to trace, and the betrayal hit Sharon like a physical blow, leaving her breathless and furious and heartsick all at once, because this wasn’t just theft—this was manipulation, deceit, and the calculated exploitation of Sharon’s goodwill, something she had fought her whole life to avoid being taken advantage of, and yet here she was again, staring at undeniable evidence that she had been blindsided right under her own roof, but the situation grew even murkier when Sharon pulled up the earliest payment records and discovered that the scam went back farther than she expected, predating Lauren’s official employment by several weeks, which meant Lauren had set this in motion long before she walked into The Boxing Den looking for work, meaning this wasn’t desperate improvisation but a fully-formed plan, executed with patience and precision, and as Sharon sat back in her chair, rubbing her temples, she felt the old fire burning in her chest—the part of her that refused to be humiliated or outplayed, the part that had survived Phil Mitchell, Den Watts, and every snake who had tried to take her down over the years—and she realized she wasn’t going to call the police immediately, not yet, because Sharon Watts didn’t move blindly; she moved smart, she moved deliberately, and she wanted to confront Lauren with the truth face-to-face, to see the lies crack in her eyes, the excuses fall apart in real time, and to give Lauren one chance—only one—to tell her why she had betrayed her, but when Sharon tracked Lauren down later that afternoon at the café, hair pulled back, hands shaking slightly as she scrolled nervously through her phone, the guilt was written across her face before Sharon even said a word, and the moment Sharon sat opposite her with a cold, steady stare, Lauren’s breath hitched, her fingers froze, and she whispered a trembling “Is everything okay?”—a question so hollow and transparent that Sharon nearly laughed at the audacity, but instead she leaned forward, voice low and razor-sharp, telling Lauren exactly what she’d found, naming the account numbers, the transfers, the dates, each detail slicing through Lauren’s defenses until her eyes filled with tears she couldn’t blink away, and the café seemed to shrink around them as Lauren stuttered excuses—pressure, debt, desperation, promises from someone else who’d said this would be temporary—but Sharon wasn’t having it, because desperation didn’t explain premeditation, and besides, Sharon had clawed her way out of worse without throwing good people under the bus, so she demanded the truth, the real truth, and after several trembling breaths, Lauren admitted that she’d been approached months earlier by a man she owed money to back in New Zealand, someone who’d threatened to expose things she’d done during her darker days abroad unless she paid him back, and he told her to get a job, any job, and skim what she could without getting caught—but the part she kept to herself, hidden behind shaking hands and tearful eyes, was that she had chosen Sharon’s business specifically because she knew Sharon would trust her, believe in her, even care about her, making her an easier mark than any corporate stranger, and when Sharon realized this—when she saw that her kindness had been weaponized—something inside her hardened permanently, so she stood from the table, towering over Lauren as she told her that the transfers would be reversed, the accounts closed, and the authorities would be notified unless Lauren fixed the mess entirely and disappeared from Sharon’s professional life for good, but just as Sharon turned to leave, Lauren grabbed her wrist, begging her not to go to the police, insisting she could repay every penny if she just had more time, promising that her son needed her, that she wasn’t a bad person, that she’d made one terrible mistake, and for a fleeting moment, Sharon hesitated, because she knew what it meant to be desperate, to be judged too harshly, to be backed into a corner with no good choices, but she also knew that letting betrayal slide only invited worse betrayals later, so she pulled her hand away gently but firmly, telling Lauren that she wasn’t out to destroy her—only to protect herself, her business, and her future—and that the next steps would depend entirely on how fast Lauren cooperated, and as Lauren collapsed into tears at the table, Sharon walked out into the brisk Walford air, her heart heavy but her resolve unshaken, because the truth was out now, and the fallout was only just beginning, and if the rest of the Square thought Sharon Watts was going to play the victim in her own story, they were about to learn—again—that she never stays down for long.