Chapter 8 - Agency
Inside Room 412, the hospital room was quiet except for the hum of the monitors and the soft, steady breathing of the triplets in their isolettes.
Victoria sat upright, her color restored, her fingers flying across the secure satellite keyboard. She wasn't waiting for Marcus to bring her news anymore; she was actively dismantling the Sterling family's corporate holdings piece by piece.
The door opened softly, and Marcus walked in, carrying a fresh cup of black coffee and a secure encrypted drive.
"We got it," Marcus said, locking the door behind him and pulling up a chair. "The metadata from the server logs Eleanor used to upload the patent drafts six months ago."
Victoria didn't look up from her screen. "And?"
"And it wasn't just Eleanor," Marcus said, a triumphant gleam in his eye. "The digital footprint traces directly back to a private server leased by Sterling & Associates. Thomas Sterling wasn't just observing the hostile takeover; he was funding it. He gave Eleanor the operational budget to infiltrate Holloway Enterprises."
Victoria finally stopped typing. She leaned back against the pillows, her expression ice-cold. "He thought he could use Grant’s ambition as a weapon against us, and then discard him when he was finished."
"Grant is currently sitting in his penthouse with Thomas Sterling's deposition sitting on his kitchen island," Marcus noted quietly, watching her face. "Sterling gave him an ultimatum: sign a false declaration blaming you for the subsidiary fraud, or watch the company go under."
Victoria turned her head to look at the three sleeping babies. Her expression softened for a fraction of a second before hardening into absolute resolve.
"Grant won't sign it," Victoria said.
Marcus raised an eyebrow. "Are you certain? Grant has always chosen self-preservation over everything else."
"He has," Victoria agreed. "But Grant hates losing control more than he hates failure. If he signs Thomas's paper, he becomes Thomas's puppet—a broken CEO working at the pleasure of an old-money family that despises him. Grant would rather burn the building down than let Thomas Sterling tell him what to do."
"So what do we do?" Marcus asked. "We can't just wait for him to make up his mind. The board meeting is at nine o'clock tomorrow morning."
Victoria reached over, picked up her secure satellite phone, and dialed a direct extension.
"Connect me with Catherine," Victoria instructed.
A moment later, her sister's crisp British accent came through the speaker. "Victoria. I'm looking at the preliminary audit of the European accounts. The numbers are worse than we thought."
"Forget the European accounts for a moment, Catherine," Victoria said smoothly. "I want you to call an emergency press conference for 8:30 AM outside the NASDAQ market floor."
Catherine paused on the other end of the line. "A press conference? On what grounds?"
"Announce the official dissolution of Holloway Enterprises as a single corporate entity," Victoria said calmly. "Split the intellectual property portfolio into a new maternal trust—wholly owned by the Holloway Children's Trust—and leave the shell company liabilities to Thomas Sterling and his associates."
Marcus caught his breath, his eyes widening in sheer disbelief. "Victoria... if you do that, you're wiping out the primary stock value overnight. The board will riot."
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"Let them," Victoria said, her eyes fixed on the glass partition. "We aren't saving Holloway Enterprises in its current form. We are burning down the foundation so Thomas Sterling and Grant have nothing left to fight over."
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