Chapter 9 - The Boardroom Guillotine
Nine o’clock the following morning, the executive boardroom on the seventy-second floor of Moretti Tower was completely silent.
The board members sat around the sixty-foot obsidian table, their faces pale, watching the stock tickers scroll in bright red across the wall monitors.
Vincent sat at the head of the table. He hadn't changed his clothes from the night before, only throwing on a dry shirt. His eyes were bloodshot, his jaw covered in rough dark stubble. He looked like a man who had stared into an abyss and had been swallowed whole.
Beside him sat Sophia, wearing an ivory suit, her eyes flashing with defensive anxiety. Her father, Robert Carter, sat two seats down, sweating profusely.
“This is an outrage,” Robert Carter blustered, slapping his hand on the table. “Whoever this Anna Bennett woman is, she’s manipulating our market valuation! We need to file an emergency federal injunction to freeze Aegis Global’s trading accounts!”
The double oak doors swung open.
“You can try, Robert,” I said, walking into the room without an appointment, flanked by three senior attorneys from Sullivan & Cromwell. “But federal courts generally frown upon embezzlement suspects filing injunctions against their creditors.”
Every single director rose to their feet in shock.
Vincent stood up so fast his leather chair crashed backward against the floor-to-ceiling glass window.
“Anna,” he breathed.
I ignored him entirely, gesturing to my lead attorney, who dropped three heavy binders onto the center of the obsidian table with a resounding thud.
“Gentlemen,” I said, resting my hands on the back of an empty chair at the opposite end of the table. “Over the past thirty-six months, Carter Logistics—owned by Robert Carter, Sophia’s father—has systematically overbilled Moretti Enterprises for maintenance contracts totaling seventy-eight million dollars.”
Sophia’s face drained of color. “That’s a lie! She’s trying to destroy us, Vincent!”
“Shut up, Sophia,” Vincent muttered, never taking his eyes off me.
“It’s not a lie,” I continued, my voice smooth and lethal. “And worse… it was Carter Logistics that falsified the pre-flight inspection logs for the Gulfstream G650 that went down three years ago.”
The entire room went dead silent.
Vincent slowly turned his head toward Robert Carter, the color leaving his face entirely. “What did you say?”
“The hydraulic failure wasn't an act of God, Vincent,” I said, meeting my husband’s hollow gaze. “Robert Carter cut corners on the secondary backup actuators to pocket a four-hundred-thousand-dollar kickback. Sophia knew about it. She insisted on joining our private flight that morning because she wanted to personally ensure the flight logs were signed off before the quarterly audit.”
I leaned forward, my knuckles resting on the polished stone.
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“Your first love didn't just steal your loyalty on that runway, Vincent. She and her family were the reason the plane caught fire in the first place.”
***
