Chapter 5 - Walking Into the Lion's Den
The glass double doors of the Wellington Grand executive boardroom loomed at the end of the forty-sixth-floor hallway like the gates of a medieval fortress.
Flashbulbs popped furiously as we stepped off the private elevator. Reporters from every major financial publication in the city swarmed the corridor, shouting questions over one another.
“Mr. Martin! Is it true you harbored unauthorized staff during a corporate crisis?”
“Who is the woman with you? Are the children yours?”
I kept my arm firmly around Anna’s shoulders, guiding her through the crush of media personnel with practiced, unyielding authority. Her chin was up, her green eyes locked forward. She wasn't the terrified housekeeper hiding in a hotel room anymore. She was the star witness to a corporate conspiracy.
The heavy oak doors parted as my head of security pushed them open from the inside.
Inside, the twelve members of the board sat around the massive mahogany table. Richard Vance sat smugly in the guest chair at the far end, sipping sparkling water as if he already owned the building.
"Julian," the lead board director, Arthur Sterling, said sternly, standing up from his seat. "You have a lot of explaining to do. This meeting was called to discuss your immediate suspension."
"Save the speech, Arthur," I said, walking to the head of the table and tossing a thick Manila folder onto the polished wood right in front of him. "Before we discuss my suspension, let's discuss corporate espionage, illegal tenant displacement, and bribery."
Richard Vance’s smug smile faltered for a fraction of a second.
"What nonsense is this?" Vance scoffed, standing up. "The board is here to address your personal misconduct with hotel staff—"
"My personal life is none of the board's concern," I cut him off, my voice echoing off the high glass walls. "Especially when it was deliberately manufactured by your firm, Richard, using a bought-and-paid-for middle manager named Greg Miller."
I signaled to the media representatives lingering outside the glass doors.
Before Arthur Sterling could open the Manila folder containing the Cayman Island wire transfers and the audio confessions we had extracted from Greg Miller three hours prior, my phone vibrated in my breast pocket.
I pulled it out. It wasn't a corporate alert this time.
It was a direct text message from an unknown number, containing a single live security camera image timestamped two minutes ago.
The image showed the inside of my Tribeca penthouse.
The living room was completely empty.
Sophia and Samuel’s toys were scattered on the floor, but the children and the nanny I had hired to watch them for twenty minutes were nowhere to be seen.
May you like
And scrawled across the kitchen island in bright red lipstick was a single sentence:
“Check your front door, Julian.”
