Chapter 4 - Panic in the Penthouse
While my father’s team tightened the noose, Daniel was waking up in our penthouse on the other side of the city, completely unaware of the disaster waiting for him.
According to our surveillance reports and digital trackers, Daniel had woken up around nine in the morning, cursing loudly when he found the master bedroom empty and my side of the bed neatly made. He had assumed I was sulking downstairs or had run off to a hotel like a coward.
Vanessa had floated out of the guest room in a silk kimono, holding a cup of coffee. “Relax, Daniel,” she had cooed, looping her arms around his neck. “She’ll crawl back by noon. She has nowhere else to go. Her father disowned her the day she married you.”
Daniel had grunted, pouring himself a double shot of whiskey before checking his corporate phone.
That was when the notifications began.
At nine-fifteen, his corporate credit card was declined at a local coffee shop.
At nine-twenty, his primary business account alerted him to an unauthorized freeze initiated by Hale Enterprises, citing a breach of fiduciary trust and loan covenant violations.
By ten o’clock, Daniel was screaming into his phone, calling his chief financial officer, only to be told that the CFO had resigned an hour ago after discovering systemic financial discrepancies.
By noon, the penthouse doorbell rang incessantly. It wasn’t a courier or a client. It was the sheriff’s department, serving Daniel with formal notice of a multi-million-dollar civil lawsuit, an emergency restraining order filed on my behalf, and a mandatory asset-freezing injunction.
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In less than three hours, Daniel’s glittering empire had transformed into a house of cards. And Vanessa, realizing that the golden goose had just been slaughtered, packed her designer bags in a blind panic, attempting to slip out the service elevator before the authorities arrived.
She didn't make it.
