flash
The heavy oak front door clicked shut, the sound echoing through the cavernous marble foyer of the Lincoln Park mansion. / Chapter 4 / 8

Chapter 4 - The Legal Blitzkrieg

The entire boardroom froze.

Marcus Vance blinked in utter confusion, looking back and forth between Richard and Cassandra. "Cassandra? What is the meaning of this? This is a private corporate board meeting!"

"Not anymore, Marcus," Cassandra said, her voice dripping with venom as she stepped past the police officers, her designer heels clicking sharply against the polished concrete floor. She looked at Richard with a triumphant, vindictive smirk. "You thought you could throw me out like trash in the middle of the night? You thought you could lock me out of my own home?"

Richard didn't flinch. He slowly stood up from his leather chair, towering over the table. "You abandoned your responsibilities, and you abused a child under your legal care. You are lucky I didn't have you arrested on the spot."

"Abused?" Cassandra let out a shrill, theatrical laugh that echoed off the glass walls. She turned to the two police officers and her attorney. "You hear that, counselor? He’s making wild, defamatory criminal accusations because I caught him neglecting his son while working seventy-hour weeks!"

Her attorney, a slick-haired man named Arthur Sterling—ironically, no relation to the acquisition group—stepped forward, flashing a thick manila folder.

"Mr. Blackwood," the attorney said smoothly, oozing corporate menace. "We have filed an emergency petition for temporary sole custody of Ethan Blackwood, alongside a freezing order on your personal assets under suspicion of domestic instability and severe parental abandonment."

Murmurs erupted around the boardroom table. Marcus Vance turned white as a sheet. "Good God, Richard... a custody freeze? If the press gets wind of this, our stock will plummet by morning!"

Cassandra stepped closer to the table, her eyes flashing with malice. "You want to play the hard-nosed billionaire, Richard? Go ahead. But you’ll do it from a jail cell or a hotel room while I take half your empire and every single right to your son."

Richard looked at the injunction papers held out in front of him. The legal trap was meticulously laid. Cassandra hadn't just packed her bags last night; she had spent the entire night conspiring with one of the most ruthless family lawyers in the state, fabricating a narrative where he was the negligent monster.

He looked at the police officers. He looked at Marcus’s terrified face.

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And then, a slow, terrifyingly calm smile spread across Richard Blackwood’s face.

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