Chapter 7 - The Final GambitChaos erupted in the boardroom. Shareholders stood up shouting; legal counsel frantically opened laptops to verify the leaked data packets; and three armed security guards burst through the side doors—not to arrest us, but because my personal security detail, alerted by June's encrypted override code, had finally breached the upper floors.
Marcus backed away from the console, his eyes wide with blind panic. He grabbed a heavy crystal paperweight from the mahogany desk and looked around like a cornered animal.
"You think this ruins me?" Marcus hissed, his voice cracking with desperation as he glared at the security officers blocking the exits. "I have offshore accounts you can't touch, Julian! I have judges in my pocket! You can't prove I intended to—"
The heavy glass doors behind him parted smoothly.
I walked into the boardroom, my stride calm, deliberate, and entirely devoid of fear. The white dress shirt sleeves were rolled up to my elbows, exposing the forearms of a man who had built an empire from the dirt up.
"You forgot the cardinal rule of the Blackwell empire, Marcus," I said softly, stopping ten feet away from him. "You never steal from someone who has nothing left to lose."
Marcus lunged forward, raising the heavy crystal paperweight with a psychotic snarl, aiming straight for my temple.
He didn't even make it two steps.
A blur of gray movement swept low across the walnut floor. June moved with lightning speed, driving her shoulder directly into Marcus’s midsection with the force of a seasoned brawler. The crystal paperweight flew from his grip, shattering against the marble baseboard as Marcus crashed heavily over a boardroom chair and hit the floor with a breathless gasp.
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Before he could struggle back to his feet, two of my senior security officers pinned his arms behind his back and slapped heavy steel cuffs around his wrists.
"Take him down to the federal holding cells in the Loop," I instructed quietly, never breaking eye contact with my disgraced COO as he was hauled toward the elevators. "And make sure federal prosecutors receive the complete, unencrypted financial packet."
