Chapter 6 - The Ultimatum
The heavy boardroom doors clicked shut, sealing the four of us inside the massive glass-walled space. The silence that followed was suffocating.
Margaret slumped back into her chair, her grand facade completely shattered. The high-society queen of Charlotte was suddenly nothing more than an aging, desperate woman whose house of cards had blown away in a single afternoon.
Ethan sank slowly into his seat, burying his face in his trembling hands.
“Ava,” he choked out, his voice cracking with pathetic desperation. “Please. We can fix this. We can go to counseling. What about the baby? Don't you want our child to grow up with a father?”
I walked around the table until I was standing right beside him. I looked down at the man I had once believed would protect me, feeling nothing—not even anger. Just a profound, liberating emptiness.
“My baby will grow up knowing what self-respect looks like,” I said quietly. “Which is something you and your mother will never understand.”
Marcus stepped forward, opening his leather briefcase and pulling out three stapled documents. He dropped one in front of Ethan and one in front of Margaret.
“What... what is this?” Ethan muttered, staring blankly at the top page.
“That,” Marcus said with a crisp, professional smile, “is a voluntary relinquishment of all corporate shares in NextGen Innovations, assigning sole ownership and intellectual property rights to Apex Holdings LLC in lieu of immediate civil litigation for fraud and embezzlement. Sign it, and my client agrees not to press criminal charges for last night's false imprisonment and assault.”
Margaret gasped, snatching the paper off the table. “You can't do this! That company is our entire legacy! We’ll sue you! We’ll—we’ll ruin you!”
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“Try it,” I said, turning toward the door. “Every text message, every threat, and every financial ledger is already backed up on cloud servers that your little tech startup couldn't hack in a thousand years. You have twenty-four hours to sign, or the police report gets filed tomorrow morning.”
I didn't wait for their answer. I turned on my heel and walked out of the boardroom, leaving them trapped in their own greed.
