Chapter 27
No.1
Elisa didn't stand up. She remained seated on the leather sofa, forcing August to look down at her,a subtle rejection of his physical intimidation.
She picked up the brown leather envelope from her lap.
With a swift, fluid motion, she pulled out the thick stack of legal documents and tossed them onto the low glass coffee table between them. The heavy paper hit the glass with a solid,echoing thud.
"Germaine wants her politicaL theater," Elisa said,her voice dripping with bored contempt. "I want my payment. Sign the transfer for the Hamptons house,and I'll leave you to your little phone calls."
August stared at the documents.
His jaw clenched. The sheer audacity of her transaction-treating their marriage like a cheap hostage negotiation-infuriated him.
He let out a harsh, mocking laugh.
"So, the mask finally slips," August sneered, his eyes filled with absolute disgust. "All that self-righteous anger at the hospital, all that fake outrage about Allena... and it all just comes down to a piece of real estate. You really are just a greedy,pathetic gold digger."
Elisa shrugged her shoulders slightly.
No.2
"If you're going to treat me like a whore, August,"she said, her voice perfectly steady, "I might as well get paid like a high-end one. Sign the paper."
The insult to herself was a calculated move. It perfectly fed his confirmation bias. It made him feel superior.
August sneered again. He bent down, snatched the thick document off the table, and turned on his heel, marching straight into his private CEO office.
Elisa stood up and followed him inside.
Simon hovered nervously by the open door,watching them like a hawk.
August threw the document onto his massive obsidian desk. He dropped into his high-backed leather chair. He reached out and pulled a heavy,black Montblanc fountain pen from its holder. He uncapped it with a sharp click.
Elisa stood on the opposite side of the desk.
Her heart began to beat faster. The rhythmic thudding echoed in her ears. She locked her knees to stop them from trembling. She forced her breathing to remain shallow and silent.
August moved his pen toward the signature line on the final page.
No.3
Then,he stopped.
The nib of the pen hovered a millimeter above the paper.
August was a predator in the financial world.He
had survived by being paranoid. A sudden,instinctual itch crawled up the back of his neck.
He slowly raised his head. His dark, piercing eyes locked onto Elisa's face.
"You seem very eager to get out of here," August said, his voice dropping an octave, heavy with sudden suspicion. "And you brought this directly from Germaine? Not through my legal team?"
Elisa's stomach plummeted into a bottomless void.He's going to read it.
She dug her fingernails brutally into the palms of her hands, using the physical pain to anchor her facial muscles.
She let out a loud, exaggerated sigh and rolled her eyes.
No.4
"It has the Chambers Legal seal right on the envelope, August," Elisa said, injecting her voice with maximum annoyance. "It's your family's standard boilerplate trust transfer. What do you think I did? Hacked your lawyers and rewrote it? I'm a nurse. If you're that terrified of a piece of paper,call your legal team and have them read it to you like a bedtime story."
The insult hit its mark.
August's eyes flashed with anger. His massive ego couldn't handle being called a coward by a woman he considered intellectually inferior.
"I don't need my lawyers to spot a rat," August growled.
He didn't sign.
Instead,he flipped the massive document back to page one.
He began to read.
The office fell into a terrifying, suffocating silence.The only sound was the sharp swish of the heavy paper as August turned the pages.
Page five. Page ten.
No.5
August was a speed reader. He consumed complex legal jargon for breakfast. His eyes darted back and forth across the text with terrifying efficiency.
Elisa felt a cold bead of sweat slide down her spine,soaking into her silk blouse.
Page fifteen.Page twenty.
Every time a page turned, it felt like a physical blow to her chest. The bomb was on page thirty-seven.The moment his eyes hit that Latin phrasing, he would know. He would know she was hiding a child.He would destroy her.
Page twenty-five.Page thirty.
August suddenly frowned. His eyes stopped moving.He stared hard at a paragraph near the bottom of page thirty.
He tapped the nib of his Montblanc pen against the desk. Tap. Tap. Tap.
He opened his mouth, drawing in a breat to ask a question about the trust yield structure.
BANG.
No.6
The heavy, soundproof oak door of the office was violently thrown open. It crashed against the wall.
Simon practically fell into the room. His face was chalk-white, his tie askew, and he was panting heavily.
August's head snapped up. His eyes blazed with lethal fury at the interruption.
"What the hell is wrong with you, Simon?!" August roared.
Simon swallowed hard, his hands shaking as he held up his phone.
"Sir," Simon gasped, his voice cracking. "It's Allena.She was at Carnegie Hall for a charity photoshoot.The scaffolding gave way. She fell off the stage."
August froze.
The color drained completely from his face.
His hand clenched into a tight fist around the heavy barrel of the pen, and in the sudden, convulsive movement, the sharp nib dragged violently across page thirty, tearing a jagged, bleeding slash of black ink through the dense text.
No.7
"ls she alive?" August whispered, his voice trembling with a terror Elisa had never heard before.
"She's conscious, but she can't move her right leg,"Simon said rapidly. "The paramedics are taking her to the VIPER at Presbyterian."
August shot out of his chair. The heavy leather seat rolled backward and crashed into the window.
The document, the property, the suspicion-everything vanished from his mind. He was completely consumed by panic.