Chapter 4 - The Boardroom Trap
Victoria’s champagne glass slipped from her fingers, shattering violently against the hardwood floor.
Her face went from a triumphant glow to an unearthly, ghostly white. She stumbled backward, bumping against the mahogany conference table, her hand clutching her throat as if she were seeing a phantom.
"D-David...?" Victoria stammered, her voice dropping into a high-pitched, pathetic squeak. "You're... you're dead! Your car... the news..."
Arthur Sterling stood up so fast his leather executive chair tipped over backward onto the carpet. "What is the meaning of this?! Security!"
"Your security team on this floor has already been disarmed, Arthur," David said, his voice completely calm, echoing through the massive room with a terrifying, crystalline authority.
Marcus and four uniformed state troopers stepped into the boardroom behind David, blocking the exit doors.
David walked slowly toward the table, every step of his polished shoes clicking sharply against the floorboards. He stopped two feet away from his wife, looking at her with a look of absolute, unadulterated disgust.
"You look disappointed, Victoria," David said softly. "Were you expecting a body from the reservoir?"
"David... please!" Victoria gasped, tears instantly springing to her eyes as she tried to execute her practiced, manipulative damsel-in-distress routine. She reached out, trying to touch his arm. "David, thank God you're alive! I saw the news and I panicked! I came here to Arthur to ask for legal help!"
David stepped back, dodging her touch as if she carried a deadly virus. "Save the acting for the jury, Victoria. Thomas is alive. He survived the boathouse."
At the mention of the chauffeur, Victoria’s fake tears instantly froze.
"And," David added, pulling the small black recording device from his pocket and placing it on the table, "Lily played hide-and-seek in your closet this morning."
The silence in the boardroom turned completely suffocating.
Arthur Sterling’s eyes darted frantically toward the private elevator bay, his forehead sweating profusely under the bright lights. "David... listen to me. This is a domestic misunderstanding. My firm had nothing to do with any violent plot—"
"Save it, Sterling," David interrupted, pulling a secondary document from his leather folder and tossing it onto the table. "While you two were waiting for my death report, my forensic IT team raided the private server you used to transfer the two-million-dollar bounty to the hitman's offshore account in the Cayman Islands. We tracked the digital wire transaction directly back to your personal IP address."
Arthur's jaw dropped. He collapsed back onto his knees, unable to form a single word in his defense.
The lead state trooper stepped forward, pulling two sets of heavy steel handcuffs from his utility belt. "Victoria Vance? Arthur Sterling? You are both under arrest for attempted capital murder, conspiracy, and corporate fraud."
Victoria let out a loud, hysterical shriek as the cold metal snapped around her wrists. "David! No! Don't do this to me! I'm your wife! What about Lily?! She needs her mother!"
David stepped right into Victoria’s face, his dark eyes burning with an absolute, unyielding fury.
May you like
"My daughter knows who you really are, Victoria," David whispered, his voice like a blade cutting through glass. "And she was the one who saved my life from you.
As the troopers dragged Victoria and Arthur out of the boardroom toward the waiting police cruisers below, David’s phone buzzed in his pocket. It was an emergency text from Marcus's lead guard in Connecticut:
“MR. VANCE! WE HAVE A SECONDARY BREACH AT YOUR MOTHER’S ESTATE! LILY HAS BEEN TAKEN!”
