Chapter 5 - The War for Sterling Enterprises
Derek was released on a fifty-thousand-dollar bail that afternoon. His mother had paid it, but she couldn't pay off the public relations nightmare.
The Sterling Enterprises stock plummeted by fourteen percent in a single day of trading. Board members were furious. The board had always viewed Derek as a spoiled, hot-tempered liability, but his engagement to me—and the merger of my tech firm's patents with their logistics infrastructure—was the only thing securing their major government contracts.
Now, that merger was dead. And I owned twenty percent of Derek’s shares.
My phone rang at 2:00 PM. An unknown number.
I answered it. "Hello?"
"Claire." It was Derek. His voice was raspy, laced with a terrifying mixture of desperation and malice. "You think you're clever, don't you? You think a few photos and a clause in a contract make you untouchable?"
"I don't think I'm untouchable, Derek," I replied quietly, signaling Lena to record the call. "I just think you're sloppy."
"Listen to me very carefully," he hissed into the receiver. "My mother is meeting with the district attorney. The police report is going to be dropped. If you don't surrender those shares back to the company by tomorrow morning, I will make sure your tech firm loses every single client it has. You’ll be bankrupt before the divorce papers are filed."
"Is that a threat?"
"It’s a guarantee, sweetheart. You know what I'm capable of."
May you like
"I do," I said softly. "And so does the prosecutor."
I hung up the phone. But deep down, a pit of ice settled in my stomach. Derek wasn't acting like a man who was defeated. He was acting like a cornered animal with one final weapon left to play.
