Chapter 7 - The Panic of Chloe Danvers
At 9:15 AM, Richard stormed into the executive suite of Foster Capital on the fortieth floor of the Midtown tower.
Chloe Danvers, his twenty-six-year-old junior partner and mistress, was already waiting in his private office, clutching an iPad with white knuckles. She was dressed in an immaculate cream pencil skirt, but her composure was completely shattered.
“Richard! What is happening?” she hissed, slamming the office door behind him. “My father just called from Zurich. He said our private entity in the Caymans has been flagged for audit! They've frozen my personal accounts!”
“Shut up and let me think!” Richard roared, ripping off his damp overcoat and throwing it onto the leather sofa.
“Don't you dare talk to me like that!” Chloe shot back. “You told me Jasmine was a brainless heiress! You told me she signed whatever power of attorney you put in front of her! Now Continental is pulling our financing, the audit flags are popping up on Bloomberg terminals, and Foster stock is down fourteen percent in pre-market trading!”
Richard gripped the edge of his desk, his breathing ragged. “She had help. Someone tipped her off. Thomas, probably, or that fossil Evelyn Cruz.”
“Where is she?” Chloe demanded.
Richard’s eyes flickered with a dark, dangerous spark. “She ran away. But it doesn't matter. At ten o'clock, the board convenes. I still hold forty percent of the voting shares, and with your father’s block, we have the majority. We pass an emergency resolution declaring Jasmine mentally incapacitated due to grief over her mother. We void her signatory authority, liquidate the Sterling escrow, and cover Continental’s margin call before twelve.”
Chloe looked at him uncertainly. “Can we do that without her being present? Legally?”
“The board does what I tell them to do,” Richard snarled, stepping up to her, his face inches from hers. The same menacing posture he had used on me last night. “Those old men want their dividends, Chloe. They don't give a damn about Jasmine's emotional stability. If I tell them she’s having a nervous breakdown in an upstate facility, they will sign whatever keeps their stock price above forty dollars.”
A sudden chime echoed from his computer.
An email had landed in his inbox.
*Sender: Supreme Court of the State of New York.*
*Subject: Summons and Notice of Emergency Hearing — Foster v. Foster.*
Attached was a single photograph.
It was an ultra-high-definition, full-color close-up of my left cheek, showing the deep purple impression of Richard’s signet ring embedded in my bruised flesh.
Richard’s throat went dry.
“What is that?” Chloe asked, leaning over the monitor.
May you like
Before he could close the window, the office intercom buzzed.
“Mr. Foster,” his executive secretary announced, her voice trembling. “The board members are all in the conference room. And... Mr. Foster, there are two plainclothes detectives from the NYPD Special Victims Unit waiting in the reception lobby.”
