Chapter 2 - The Counter-Strategy
The silence in the nursery was broken only by the quiet hum of the baby monitor and the steady breathing of little June in her crib. Greer stood beside the window, watching the late afternoon shadows stretch across the manicured lawn of the estate that Landon believed was entirely under his control. He had forgotten a fundamental truth about Maddox House and the fortune that built their lives: every brick, every patent, and every share of preferred stock had been registered under Greer’s maiden name before they ever walked down the aisle.
Her phone buzzed against the windowsill. It was an alert from the smart-home security system. The front gate camera had recorded a service van pulling away, but more importantly, the digital lock logs showed that Landon’s mother, Evelyn, had attempted to use her master PIN code at 4:15 p.m. and had been locked out.
Greer felt a cold, sharp clarity replacing the numbness that had threatened to swallow her earlier. Rachel Sloan’s voice echoed in her mind from their hurried phone call fifteen minutes ago. "They are building a paper trail of your incapacity, Greer. If they lock you out of your own home and corporate email before Monday morning, you will be fighting an uphill battle against a fabricated reality. We need to flip the narrative before they even realize the locks have been changed."
Greer moved swiftly. She picked up June, wrapping the cream cashmere blanket securely around the infant, and packed a heavy diaper bag with formula, medical records, and her passport. She left the nursery exactly as it was, save for downloading the encrypted security archives to a thumb drive hidden in her pocket. Before walking out to her car, she sent a brief, polite text to Landon.
Greer: I took June to my cousin’s place for a quiet weekend of recovery. The doctors advised peace and quiet away from the city. Don't worry about us.
It was a trap disguised as reassurance. By telling him she had left voluntarily for a quiet weekend, she effectively neutralized any immediate police report about a missing child or a hysterical wife running away in the middle of the night. She gave him enough rope to hang his own corporate coup.
Within twenty minutes, Greer was safely inside her cousin’s townhouse across town—a secure, quiet sanctuary where no smart locks linked back to Landon’s centralized dashboard. She placed June in a portable bassinet beside the sofa and called Rachel back immediately.
“They tried the master code on the front door twenty minutes after I changed it,” Greer said, her voice steady and chillingly calm.
“Good,” Rachel replied on the other end of the line. “That proves intent. They expected to walk in, find you either asleep or compliant, and secure your signature on the medical leave paperwork while isolating you from legal counsel. Now, let’s talk about Monday’s board meeting. Do you want to attend in person, or do we drop a bomb remotely?”
“I want to walk through those glass doors at Maddox House myself,” Greer said, looking down at her sleeping daughter. “I want to watch Landon try to explain why his mistress is wearing my mother’s earrings in a family portrait while my voting rights are supposedly being stripped due to medical fragility.”
Rachel laughed softly, a sound of grim approval. “Then we need to move fast. I’ve already subpoenaed the photography vendor for the unedited contract logs and raw metadata. We also need to secure the corporate servers before Landon’s IT team locks you out of the internal network. Do you still have your master admin credentials?”
“Of course,” Greer answered. “Landon always thought the tech side was too boring for him to manage. He only cared about the press releases and the board dinners.”
May you like
“Perfect. Log into the internal system tonight, but don’t touch anything. Just verify that your admin access is still active so they can’t flash a remote override on Sunday night. I’ll draft a preliminary injunction regarding corporate governance and asset misappropriation to be filed first thing Monday morning.”
Greer hung up and sat beside June’s bassinet. The initial shock of betrayal had transformed into a cold, unbreakable resolve. Landon thought he had outsmarted her by staging a domestic transition behind her back. He had no idea that the foundation he stood on was made of glass, and Greer held the hammer.
