“Where have you been?” she hissed through gritted teeth, maintaining her beaming facade for the cameras. “Daddy is about to make the toast. Get up there.”
I let her lead me to the raised dais. Grant Whitmore stood at the podium, looking slightly gaunt but projecting the aura of a king.
“…and so, as we merge Whitmore Holdings with Bellamy Tech, we are not just building a conglomerate. We are building a family,” Grant announced, raising his glass. The room erupted in polite applause.
Tessa leaned her head on my shoulder. “Smile, darling,” she whispered.
I stepped up to the microphone. “Grant is right,” I said, my voice booming through the speakers. The room quieted. “Family requires sacrifice. It requires giving up pieces of yourself to ensure the survival of the bloodline. Isn’t that right, Grant?”
Grant’s smile faltered by a millimeter. Tessa stiffened beside me.
Behind my back, I pressed a button on my phone. Maren, hidden in the AV control room above the balcony, executed the override.
The massive digital screens behind the dais, meant to display our new corporate logo, suddenly flickered. They went black, then blazed to life with Carl Denning’s surveillance files.
Gasps rippled through the ballroom.
“What is this?” a board member shouted.
“This,” I said into the mic, my voice cold and steady, “is the anatomy of a frame job.”
The screens cycled rapidly. The forged bank transfers. The emails from Tessa’s private server paying off the hotel actor. But I didn’t stop there. I pressed the button again.
The screens shifted to the medical documents. The Zurich clinic. Grant’s leukemia diagnosis. And a photo of an eleven-month-old baby girl hooked to a monitor.
“My ex-wife did not betray me,” I projected over the rising murmur of the crowd. “My fiancée, Tessa Whitmore, orchestrated it. She did it to steal my infant daughter, Clara, to use her as an illegal, involuntary bone marrow farm for her dying father.”
Chaos erupted. Chairs scraped backward. Reporters in the back of the room frantically raised their cameras.
“Cut the mics! Cut the power!” Grant roared, abandoning his statesman persona. He lunged toward me, but I shoved him back.
“As of this moment,” I yelled over the din, “I am stepping down as CEO of Bellamy Tech. I have submitted a full dossier of our merged financial ties to the FBI and the SEC. I am turning state’s evidence against my own company to expose the Whitmore syndicate. You wanted my empire, Grant? You can have the ashes.”
Tessa grabbed my arm, her nails digging into my skin like talons, her face twisted into a mask of pure, ugly panic. “You’re insane! You’ve ruined yourself!”
“I was already ruined, Tessa,” I whispered. “I’m just finally waking up.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw Grant furiously typing on his phone, then whispering to his head of security. The security chief nodded, tapped his earpiece, and sprinted for the service exit.
Move the package now.
“Maren, go!” I screamed into my lapel mic.
I bolted off the stage, dodging grasping board members and confused security guards. I burst through the kitchen doors, sprinting for the loading dock where my SUV was idling. Maren slid into the passenger seat a second later, slamming the door.
“They’re moving the flight up,” Maren gasped, pulling up the FAA tracker on her laptop. “They’ve requested immediate taxi to Runway 3.”
I slammed the car into gear, the tires smoking on the wet concrete. “They aren’t taking off tonight.”
The drive to the private airfield was a blur of adrenaline and flashing streetlights. Maren was on the phone with Evelyn, coordinating the police response, but we both knew the cops were too far away. Money buys time, and Grant Whitmore had bought just enough to get his private jet off American soil.
We tore through the perimeter fencing of the private terminal, the heavy iron gates buckling under the force of the two-ton SUV.
Ahead of us, through the driving rain, I saw it. The sleek, silver Gulfstream G650. The boarding stairs were already retracting. The twin Rolls-Royce engines were spooling up, a deafening, high-pitched whine that vibrated in my teeth.
“Rowan, they’re moving!” Maren screamed, bracing her hands on the dashboard.
The jet began to roll forward, turning onto the active runway. Once it hit speed, nothing could stop it.
I didn’t think. I just acted.
I pressed the accelerator to the floor. The SUV roared, hydroplaning slightly on the slick tarmac. We shot past the wing, aiming dead ahead of the nose gear.
“Brace!” I roared.
