She walked to the door, pausing just before stepping out. “Oh, and Audrey? Dominic’s building access has been restored. He’s on his way up.”
I sat in the sterile waiting room of Mount Sinai Hospital for six hours. The doctors said my father had survived, but he needed a bypass surgery and weeks of absolute rest. The stress had nearly killed him.
I was entirely alone. I couldn’t call the police. I couldn’t call the board. I was paralyzed by a three-hundred-million-dollar gun held to my father’s head.
At midnight, I walked out of the hospital into the pouring rain. My phone buzzed in my pocket. I expected it to be Dominic, gloating.
Instead, it was an unknown number.
I know about the European loan. I know what Victoria is doing. Meet me at Trattoria Rossi in Hell’s Kitchen. Now. Come alone.
I stared at the screen, the rain mixing with the tears I finally allowed myself to shed. I had no allies left. It was a trap, surely. But I had forty-two hours left until I lost my family’s legacy.
I hailed a yellow cab. “Hell’s Kitchen,” I told the driver.
Chapter 3: The Enemy of My Enemy
Trattoria Rossi was a dimly lit, hole-in-the-wall Italian joint that smelled of garlic, old wine, and secrets. At 1:00 AM, it was practically deserted, save for a few insomniacs at the bar.
I walked to the back booth, hidden in the shadows beneath a flickering neon beer sign. Sitting there, wearing a dark trench coat and large sunglasses despite the late hour, was the last person on earth I expected to see.
“Sit down, Audrey,” Natalie said, pushing a cup of black coffee across the checkered tablecloth toward me.
I stopped dead in my tracks, my fists clenching so hard my nails dug into my palms. “Is this a joke? Did Dominic send you here to gloat?”
Natalie pulled off her sunglasses. The smug, triumphant mistress from the courthouse was gone. In her place was a woman looking genuinely terrified, with dark bags under her eyes and a nervous twitch in her jaw.
“Dominic doesn’t know I’m here. If Victoria finds out I’m talking to you, she’ll destroy me.” Natalie glanced over her shoulder, paranoid. “Sit. Please.”
I slid into the vinyl booth, not touching the coffee. “Talk. You have three minutes before I throw this hot coffee in your face.”
Natalie let out a shaky breath. “I’m not who you think I am, Audrey. I mean, yes, Dominic and I were sleeping together. I’m not denying the affair. But that wasn’t why I was brought into Crestwood.”
“Enlighten me.”
“I’m a forensic accountant. Or, I was, until I lost my license in Chicago for… a misunderstanding.” She looked down at her hands. “Victoria found me. She offered me a fortune to come to New York, sleep with Dominic to keep him distracted, and cook the books for her.”
I stared at her, my mind spinning. “Victoria hired her son’s mistress?”
“Victoria controls everything,” Natalie said bitterly. “Dominic thinks he’s a king, but he’s just a pawn. Victoria needed the money from the shell companies hidden cleanly. I set up the offshore accounts. I routed the funds. I made sure the audits looked pristine.”
“Then why are you here? You helped her build the guillotine hanging over my neck.”
Natalie reached into her trench coat pocket and pulled out a small, silver USB drive. She set it on the table between us, keeping her hand resting over it.
“Because Victoria is setting me up as the fall girl,” Natalie whispered, her voice trembling. “I found internal memos on her private server. Once Dominic takes over as CEO on Friday, they are going to trigger a fake internal investigation. They are going to ‘discover’ the embezzlement, pin the entire thing on the rogue accountant who seduced the innocent husband, and hand me over to the feds to legitimize Dominic’s leadership.”
I leaned back, analyzing the woman across from me. She wasn’t an evil mastermind; she was a mercenary who had realized she was standing on a landmine.
“What’s on the drive?” I asked.
“Everything. The real ledgers. Victoria’s emails to the Cayman Island banks. The proof that the mezzanine loan was fraudulent from the start—she bribed a bank executive to sneak the Cross-Default clause past your father’s lawyers.” Natalie pushed the drive a millimeter closer to me. “But there’s something else on there. Something Victoria doesn’t even know about. Something that will give you the leverage you need to break her.”
“What do you want in return?” I asked, my corporate instincts kicking back in.
“Two million dollars, wired to a non-extradition country, and a twenty-four-hour head start before you blow this whole thing up.”
It was extortion. It was paying off the woman who had wrecked my marriage. But as I looked at the USB drive gleaming under the neon light, I saw the only weapon capable of saving my father’s life and his company.
“Agreed,” I said coldly. “Give me the drive.”
Natalie slid it across the table. I grabbed it, dropping it into my purse like it was a live grenade.
“Audrey,” Natalie said as I stood up to leave. “When you look at the hidden folder marked ‘Project Icarus’… make sure you’re sitting down.”
I didn’t say goodbye. I walked out into the rain, my mind racing. I had the ledger, which meant I could prove Victoria’s fraud. But it still didn’t solve the immediate problem: if I brought this to the police, Victoria would trigger the poison pill out of spite before the feds could freeze her assets. My father would still be ruined.
I needed to see what Natalie had found.
I rushed back to my empty penthouse—the one Dominic had moved out of a month prior. The silence in the massive apartment was deafening. I poured a glass of scotch, booted up my personal, heavily encrypted laptop, and plugged in the USB drive.
Files upon files of financial ruin cascaded across my screen. Natalie hadn’t lied; Victoria’s fingerprints were on every stolen dollar. But I ignored them, scrolling frantically until I found the folder labeled Project Icarus.
I opened it.
It was a separate set of bank statements, completely disconnected from Victoria’s Cayman accounts. These were wired to a bank in Macau, and to shell companies holding high-end real estate in Dubai.
I cross-referenced the dates and the transfer IDs. My jaw slowly dropped as the horrific, brilliant reality of the data clicked into place.
It wasn’t Victoria stealing this money.
It was Dominic.
Dominic wasn’t just stealing from Crestwood. He was aggressively, systematically embezzling funds from his mother’s secret offshore accounts. He was skimming from the skimmer to fund a massive underground gambling habit and real estate investments she knew nothing about. The arrogant, smug man who thought he was a king was actually a thief stealing from a cartel boss—and the boss was his own mother.
I stared at the screen, a slow, dangerous smile spreading across my face in the dark apartment. Victoria thought she held all the cards because her son was loyal. But her son was a traitor to his own blood.
I had thirty hours left until the board meeting. I didn’t just have a weapon anymore. I had the nuclear launch codes.
I picked up my phone and made an international call.
“Hello?” a sleepy, refined British voice answered.
“Mr. Sterling,” I said to my father’s oldest estate attorney in London. “I need to access the Eleanor Trust.”
There was a long pause. “Audrey, your mother’s trust hasn’t been touched since she passed. It’s meant for your children. If you liquidate it, the tax penalties alone—”
“I don’t care about the penalties, Henry,” I interrupted fiercely. “I need three hundred million dollars liquid, and I need it untraceable, ready to purchase corporate debt through an anonymous proxy by 9:00 AM tomorrow.”
“Good lord, Audrey. What are you doing?”
“I’m buying a poison pill,” I said. “And then I’m going to shove it down my mother-in-law’s throat.”
Chapter 4: The House of Cards
The next thirty hours were a blur of encrypted phone calls, offshore wire transfers, and coordinating with high-priced fixers who asked no questions. I barely slept. I existed on black coffee and the pure, unadulterated adrenaline of vengeance.
I had to play my part perfectly. I had to let them think I was beaten.
At 8:00 AM on Friday, two hours before the emergency board meeting, I received an alert on my phone.
Transaction Complete. Asset Acquired.
The debt was mine. The massive loan holding my father’s company and freedom hostage no longer belonged to Victoria’s shadowy private equity firm. It belonged to an anonymous holding company registered in the British Virgin Islands. A holding company entirely controlled by me.
I showered, put on a sharp, crimson Tom Ford power suit that felt like armor, and applied my lipstick like war paint.
When I arrived at Crestwood Holdings, the atmosphere was distinctly different than two days prior. The Vance family lackeys I had fired had miraculously returned to their desks, sneering at me as I walked past. The hostile takeover was in full swing.
I ignored them, keeping my expression entirely neutral, projecting the aura of a defeated woman coming to surrender her sword.
I took the elevator to the 50th floor. The doors to the executive boardroom were open.
I stepped inside.
The massive mahogany table was surrounded by the twelve members of the Board of Directors—older men and women in dark suits, looking uncomfortable and somber. At the head of the table, sitting in my father’s chair, was Dominic.
He looked like a king holding court. He wore a triumphant smirk, his hands steepled in front of him. Standing directly behind him, her hands resting possessively on the back of his leather chair, was Victoria. She looked like a queen mother who had just conquered a new territory.
“Audrey,” Dominic said, his voice echoing in the cavernous room. “How gracious of you to join us. How is Arthur doing? Recovering, I hope?”
“He’s stable,” I replied coldly, walking toward the empty chair at the opposite end of the table. “No thanks to the stress you’ve put him under.”
A few board members murmured sympathetically, but Victoria silenced them with a sharp look.
“Let us dispense with the pleasantries,” Victoria announced, taking charge. “We are here because Arthur Sterling is physically incapacitated and incapable of fulfilling his fiduciary duties as CEO. Under the bylaws, the board must vote on an immediate successor to stabilize the stock price.”
“And you propose Dominic,” I said.
“Dominic has been the de facto operator of this firm for years,” Victoria countered smoothly. “The transition will be seamless. Furthermore, Audrey, as you are currently holding your father’s proxy, we have prepared a document for you to sign.”
Dominic slid a sleek leather folder down the length of the long table. It stopped inches from my hands.
“What is this?” I asked, not opening it.
“It’s a surrender of proxy and a confidentiality agreement,” Dominic said, leaning forward. “You sign your father’s voting rights over to me. You walk away quietly. In exchange, the… debt issue we discussed will remain dormant. We will not trigger the default. Your father stays out of prison, the pension fund remains safe, and you get to keep your Hamptons house.”
