Chapter 6 - The Tables TurnGrace looked directly into Charles’s cold, unreadable eyes. She swallowed the lump of terror in her throat, remembering the burner phone tucked safely in her pocket and the flash drive burning against her thigh.
She took a deep, steadying breath.
“Yes, Mr. Whitmore,” Grace said, her voice suddenly clear, steady, and entirely devoid of fear. “I was going through his private desk.”
Arthur Vance gasped in outrage, pointing a finger at her. “There! She admits it! Call the police right now! Sue her and throw her in federal prison for corporate espionage!”
Mrs. Higgins beamed with malicious satisfaction. “I told you so, Mr. Whitmore. You can’t trust trash off the street—”
“Quiet, Mrs. Higgins,” Charles commanded softly.
The single word carried such absolute authority that the housekeeper snapped her mouth shut instantly.
Charles took another step forward, stopping just inches from Grace. A subtle, dangerous glint appeared in his pale eyes—not anger, but a cold, calculating satisfaction.
“And why, pray tell, were you searching through Mr. Vance’s desk, Grace?” Charles asked, tilting his head slightly.
Grace met his gaze head-on. She reached slowly into her apron pocket, pulled out the black flash drive, and held it out on the palm of her hand.
“Because Mr. Vance told me to,” Grace said clearly.
The room erupted.
“Liar!” Arthur Vance shrieked, his face turning the color of a beet, sweat instantly beading on his forehead. “That is an absolute, vicious lie! I’ve never spoken to this filthy peasant in my life!”
“Is it a lie, Arthur?” Charles asked smoothly, turning his head slowly toward his chief financial officer.
The icy calm in Charles’s voice made Vance freeze. The color drained entirely from the CFO’s face, leaving him looking ghastly pale.
“C-Charles, you can’t possibly believe her over me!” Vance stammered, backing away half a step. “She’s a caught thief! She’s trying to deflect blame!”
“Am I?” Charles turned back to Grace. With deliberate slowness, the billionaire reached out and lifted the black flash drive off her palm. He slipped it into his suit pocket, then reached into his other pocket and pulled out his own phone, tapping the screen.
A digital audio recording began to play aloud in the quiet bedroom.
“...just make sure the girl takes the fall, Mrs. Higgins. Plant the Sterling documents in my desk, wait for her to go snooping—which you’ve already tricked her into doing—and catch her red-handed. Once she’s locked away for corporate theft, nobody will ever look at my hard drive again.”
The voice echoing from the phone was unmistakably Arthur Vance’s.
Mrs. Higgins turned the color of death. Her knees buckled beneath her, and she grabbed onto the edge of a velvet chair to keep from collapsing.
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Arthur Vance stared at the phone in absolute horror, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. “That... that’s fabricated! AI! That’s fake!”
“It’s forensic-grade audio captured by the micro-surveillance system I installed in this entire wing three weeks ago, Arthur,” Charles said, his voice dropping into a deadly, chilling whisper. He stepped toward Vance like a panther closing in on a wounded deer. “The moment you started leaking Whitmore Global’s portfolio to Richard Sterling six months ago, I knew. I just needed to see who your accomplices were. Using Mrs. Higgins to frame an innocent girl in my own home? That was your fatal mistake.”
