Chapter 3 - The Expulsion
“Arthur,” I said, my voice echoing clearly through the vaulted dining hall.
“Yes, Mrs. Hart-Caldwell,” the elderly butler responded instantly, his posture ramrod straight, his loyalty absolute.
“Please escort Miss Vale to the front gates. Ensure her personal belongings—whatever she managed to pack into her designer bags—are sent via courier to her apartment in Brooklyn. Her access card to the Greenwich estate has already been deactivated at the main security console.”
Madison shrieked, springing up from my chair with a speed that defied her supposedly delicate condition. “You can’t do that! I am carrying a Caldwell heir! Victoria, tell her! Tell this psycho she can't throw me out into the street!”
Victoria looked at Madison not with warmth or maternal solidarity, but with sudden, biting disgust. The ruthless matriarch of Greenwich suddenly saw Madison not as a weapon to destroy me, but as a liability—a walking scandal that threatened to drag the entire Caldwell name into the mud alongside her ruined son.
“Keep your voice down, girl,” Victoria spat, her voice cold as ice. “You’ve caused quite enough damage for one evening. Arthur heard the lady. Get out.”
“You’re throwing me out? You?” Madison’s face flushed a furious, blotchy red. She turned her wild glare onto Grant, grabbing the lapels of his expensive Italian suit and shaking him violently. “Tell her, Grant! Tell your mother! We planned this together! You said your wife was a pushover! You said she’d sign the papers and we’d have everything!”
Grant didn’t look at her. His eyes were glued to the floor, his professional reputation, his freedom, and his luxurious lifestyle evaporating into thin air before his eyes. When he refused to meet her gaze, Madison’s manic betrayal boiled over. With a sharp cry of absolute rage, she raised her hand and brought it hard across Grant’s cheek, leaving a bright red handprint stark against his pale skin.
“Coward!” she screamed, before turning and bolting toward the double doors. Two private security guards, summoned silently by Arthur’s subtle wrist gesture, materialized at the entrance, blocking her exit just long enough to guide her firmly down the grand hallway, her muffled sobs echoing back into the dining room.
When the heavy doors swung shut behind her, the room plunged into an eerie, suffocating quiet.
Celeste packed her laptop into her leather folio, zipping it shut with a definitive motion. She looked at Grant, who was still kneeling near the fallen chair like a broken man, then turned to me.
“The board of directors at Hart Meridian has been notified of the asset freeze under emergency clause 9. By 8:00 AM tomorrow, your father’s legacy will be officially scrubbed of every single executive appointment Grant currently holds. His corporate office, his company car, his corporate credit cards—everything is locked.”
May you like
Grant let out a hollow, broken laugh from the floor. “You’re ruining me,” he whispered, staring up at the ceiling chandeliers that had watched over his family’s reign for decades. “You’re destroying everything I worked for.”
“Worked for?” I looked down at him, my expression completely devoid of pity. “Grant, you never worked for anything in your life. You inherited a surname and married a fortune. Tomorrow morning, you’ll find out what it’s like to start with nothing—just like my father did when he built this company from two rented desks and a dream you thought you could crush.”
