Chapter 15 - The Boardroom Coup
"Window," Grant mouthed to me, pointing to the adjoining balcony that connected Arthur's office to the boardroom.
We slipped out the glass doors just as the main office door was kicked open. Two massive men in dark suits stormed in, guns drawn.
We crouched low against the balcony wall, the wind whipping my hair around my face. Sixty stories below, the traffic of New York City looked like toy cars.
"They got the flash drive," one of the men growled inside. "Call Mr. Sterling. Tell him Callahan knows."
Grant didn't hesitate. He grabbed my hand, yanking me through the boardroom doors and out into the main corridor, sprinting toward the emergency stairwell. We flew down three flights of stairs before bursting out onto the 57th floor, mingling with a crowd of oblivious accounting employees.
Grant's phone buzzed violently in his pocket.
He answered it on speaker.
"Hello, Grant," Arthur Sterling's voice echoed through the line, smooth and dripping with venom. "I see you found my little insurance policy against Renata."
"You're a dead man, Arthur," Grant hissed, weaving through the cubicles, dragging me along. "The police have the audio. It's uploading to the cloud right now."
"I wouldn't be so sure about that," Arthur chuckled. "You see, while you were busy playing detective in my office, I decided to pay a visit to the St. Jude VIP Medical Pavilion."
My heart stopped beating.
I froze in the middle of the hallway.
"What did you do?" I screamed into the phone.
"Emma, is that you?" Arthur mocked. "Your mother is a lovely woman. Very fragile, though. It’s a shame the dialysis machine in her private suite is so... complicated. One flipped switch, and things could go terribly wrong."
"If you touch her—" Grant roared.
"I want the flash drive, Grant," Arthur interrupted, his voice dropping its friendly facade. "I want the original drive, the phone, and every copy you made. You are going to walk into the ground floor lobby in exactly ten minutes and hand it to my men. If you call the police, if you try to leak it to the press, the old woman's heart stops."
The line went dead.
I collapsed against the wall, my knees giving out. My mother. He had my mother.
May you like
Grant caught me before I hit the floor, pulling me tightly against his chest. His eyes were wild, but his voice was steady.
"Emma, look at me," Grant demanded, forcing my chin up. "He is not going to hurt her. Do you hear me? I will burn this entire city to ash before I let Arthur Sterling take anything else from us."
