Chapter 2 - Locks and Cold Coffee
By six o’clock the following morning, the Chicago skyline was shrouded in thick autumn fog.
I walked through the brass-trimmed glass doors of Whitmore Tower wearing a dark charcoal maternity suit and flat leather boots.
Beside me walked Marcus Reed, my father’s personal estate attorney, carrying a reinforced leather briefcase.
The night security supervisor, Frank, who had known my father for twenty years, stood up from the front desk immediately.
“Good morning, Miss Whitmore,” Frank said, his eyes reflecting quiet respect and obvious concern for my condition.
“We received the overnight directive from Chairwoman Shaw.”
“Thank you, Frank,” I replied calmly, resting a hand over my swollen belly.
“Has Mr. Sterling’s keycard access been modified?”
Frank tapped his monitor, revealing a bright red system lockout icon next to Adrian’s executive profile.
“All biometric scans for the sixty-fourth floor, the private elevators, and the underground executive garage have been suspended.”
“Furthermore, his company email servers and cloud repositories were quarantined at midnight.”
Marcus Reed pulled out a stack of stamped revocation notices and placed them on the counter.
“If Mr. Sterling arrives before the eight o’clock board meeting, escort him to Conference Room D on the third floor.”
“He is not to step foot on the executive level without Ms. Whitmore’s written authorization.”
Frank nodded crisply. “Consider it done, ma'am.”
I stepped into the private express elevator that carried me directly to the penthouse suite of the tower.
Stepping into Adrian’s corner office, the smell of his expensive cedarwood cologne still lingered in the air.
On his mahogany desk sat a framed photograph of our wedding day in Tuscany, bathed in golden Italian sunlight.
Beside it sat an architectural model of the newly proposed riverfront development project.
I walked over to the desk, turned the wedding photo face-down onto the leather blotter, and opened his laptop drawer.
A separate corporate credit card statement lay exposed beneath his leather organizer.
Line after line revealed charges for five-star boutique hotels in Paris, private prenatal ultrasound clinics, and custom nursery furniture.
Every single dinner he claimed to have spent negotiating with foreign investors had been billed to my family's ledger.
He had bought Madison diamond earrings while telling me our quarterly household budget needed tightening for the baby.
A sharp cramp tightened across my abdomen, forcing me to lean against the edge of the desk.
I closed my eyes, breathing slowly through the pain until the contraction subsided into a dull ache.
May you like
“Not today, little girl,” I whispered to my daughter, stroking the curve of my stomach.
“Your mother has a company to take back before you arrive.”
