Chapter 7 - The Gathering Storm
For the next four days, Hannah lived in a haze of smoke-damaged brass, insurance forms, and hospital shifts.
The shop’s ground floor was largely intact, but the ceiling had collapsed near the back, ruining three priceless antique timepieces and flooding the workroom with water.
The city building inspector arrived on Thursday morning, slapping a bright red UNINHABITABLE notice directly onto the front glass door.
"Structural hazard," the inspector muttered flatly, refusing to meet Hannah’s burning glare. "Town hall hearing is tomorrow night at seven. If the condemnation order passes, demolition starts Monday."
"Who paid you?" Hannah asked coldly. "Richard Rowan, or one of his shell companies?"
The inspector shoved his clipboard into his leather bag and hurried down the sidewalk without uttering another word.
Hannah sat on the front stoop of the ruined shop, holding a cup of cold tea.
Her phone vibrated in her lap.
The Briar Falls Grand Ballroom. 8:00 PM tonight. Wear something nice. Your father’s clock shop is on the private auction block. — C.
Hannah stared at the text.
Richard Rowan wasn't even waiting for the city council's public vote. He was privately pre-selling the development plots to international investors at a high-end charity gala tonight.
She stood up, brushed the plaster dust off her jeans, and dialed her best friend Sarah, who worked in ward administration at St. Vincent's.
"Sarah," Hannah said into the phone, her voice cold, steady, and razor-sharp. "I need to borrow your emerald green silk dress. The one you wore to your sister's wedding."
"Hannah? What are you doing?"
"I’m going to crash a billionaire’s party," Hannah said. "And I’m bringing eighty years of receipts."
She spent the afternoon gathering her evidence. She printed the 1984 municipal diversion blueprints, the arson investigator's private notes questioning the electrical origin, and the bank transfers Caleb had secretly sent to her email an hour earlier.
Caleb had sent her everything.
His entire ten-year undercover dossier on Rowan Capital's corporate bribery, bank fraud, and falsified safety reports was now sitting in her cloud drive.
He had handed her the match to burn down his family’s empire.
At 7:45 PM, Hannah Keene stepped out of an Uber in front of the glittering Briar Falls Grand Ballroom.
The rain had finally stopped, replaced by a biting Atlantic frost.
May you like
She wore the floor-length emerald dress, her dark hair pinned up in an elegant, deliberate sweep, her spine straight as an arrow.
Beneath the velvet clutch tucked under her arm lay an iPad loaded with forty years of corporate corruption.
