Chapter 5 - The Midnight Visitor
The live video feed on my phone displayed a rain-slicked driveway under the amber glow of the security lamps at my private estate. A familiar silver sedan was parked awkwardly across the front gates, its hazard lights blinking in the damp night air.
Stepping out of the driver's side wasn't a process server or a hired investigator. It was Aaron’s mother, Eleanor.
She looked frantic, clutching a heavy leather briefcase against her trench coat as she hammered her fist against the intercom keypad. She had flown out of Geneva on the corporate backup jet the moment Daniel froze the international accounts, realizing that the sleek narrative her son and Marcus Vance had constructed was unraveling faster than they could patch the holes.
I looked up from the screen to find Marcus Vance watching my expression closely. He hadn't seen the feed, but he could tell by the shift in my posture that something new had entered the equation.
"Trouble at home?" Vance asked, his voice regaining a thin veneer of corporate composure.
"Your backup plan just arrived at my front gate," I said, slipping the phone back into my pocket. "Turns out Aaron's mother didn't want to stay in Switzerland once the credit cards stopped working."
Vance’s jaw tightened. He took a step toward the elevator, clearly realizing that the night was spiraling completely out of his control. "This doesn't change anything, Alyssa. The restraining order is active until morning. You cannot legally interact with Prescott family members without counsel present."
"I haven't interacted with her yet," I replied, walking past him toward the private elevator. "You're welcome to stay and admire the oak desk, Marcus. But if I were you, I’d check the status of your retainer check before the banks clear tomorrow morning."
I pressed the elevator call button. The doors opened immediately, and I stepped inside, watching Vance standing alone in the center of the vast, silent penthouse suite as the stainless-steel doors slid shut between us.
Ten minutes later, my town car dropped me off at the wrought-iron gates of my estate. The rain was coming down harder now, washing the dark asphalt clean. Eleanor was still standing by the intercom, her umbrella inverted by a sudden gust of wind, looking thoroughly drenched and entirely stripped of her usual haughty composure.
When my car’s headlights swept across the wet driveway, she turned sharply, hurrying toward the passenger window as Leo pulled to a stop.
"Alyssa! Open the door," Eleanor demanded, her voice muffled through the glass, trembling slightly from the cold. "We need to talk. This foolishness has gone far enough."
I pressed the window control switch, lowering the glass halfway. The damp night air rushed in, carrying the scent of wet pine and ozone. I didn't unlock the car door. I simply looked down at her from the dry comfort of the back seat.
"You look cold, Eleanor," I said evenly. "You should have stayed in Geneva."
"Aaron is an idiot," she blurted out, dropping all pretense of maternal dignity. "He listened to Marcus and that wretched girl, and now the board is in a panic. The Swiss investors are threatening to pull out by dawn unless the master server keys are restored. You have to call off the hardware lockout."
"Why would I do that?" I asked, resting my arm casually along the leather door frame. "According to you, I'm just an inconsiderate wife who doesn't know her place."
Eleanor gripped the edge of the car door, her knuckles white against the dark leather. "Because if the company goes under, Aaron goes down for corporate fraud. The Alpine Ventures wire transfers... Marcus structured them, but Aaron signed the authorizations. If the audit goes public, the SEC won't just investigate the shell company—they’ll look at every penny Aaron pulled out of the seed round."
The silence stretched between us for a long moment, broken only by the steady hiss of rain against the car roof.
She thought she was offering me a compromise—protecting her son from prison by begging me to restore his infrastructure. She still didn't understand that I wasn't trying to destroy Prescott Technologies. I was simply taking back what was mine.
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"Tell me something, Eleanor," I said softly, leaning closer to the open window. "When Aaron and Marcus planned this whole thing six months ago... did you help them pick the secretary, or was that entirely Marcus's idea?"
Eleanor froze, the color draining completely from her face in the dark.
