Chapter 7 - The Final Audit
Time seemed to slow down to a crawl.
As the heavy steel wrench cut through the air toward her, Chloe didn't freeze. Years of dodging unruly customers at high-end restaurants, combined with the ruthless situational awareness Julian had forced her to develop, took over.
She ducked underneath the swinging arc of the wrench, letting the momentum carry Arthur forward. As he stumbled past her, she threw her entire body weight against his back, shoving him violently toward the floor-to-ceiling glass wall of the adjacent conference room.
Crash!
The reinforced safety glass spiderwebbed under the impact, absorbing the blow but cracking into a thousand jagged pieces. Arthur screamed as he bounced off the glass, dropping the wrench, which clattered loudly against the floor.
Before he could recover, heavy footsteps echoed down the private elevator corridor.
"Security! Freeze!"
Marcus and three other private guards burst out of the express elevator, weapons drawn, flashlights cutting blinding beams through the dark hallway. In the center of the chaos stood Julian Thorne, his coat discarded, his sleeves rolled up, looking like an avenging angel of wrath.
Julian took in the scene in a single glance: Arthur sprawling on the floor amidst shattered glass, holding a bleeding head wound, and Chloe standing a few feet away, breathing heavily but completely unharmed.
Julian’s face went white, then dark with a fury so intense it made the guards step back.
He crossed the distance in three strides, ignoring Arthur entirely, and grabbed Chloe by her shoulders. His hands were shaking slightly—the only sign of the sheer terror that had gripped him when the building's main security console flagged a forced server override on her floor.
"Are you hurt?" Julian demanded, his voice rough and stripped of its usual corporate polish.
"I'm fine," Chloe breathed, looking up into his storm-gray eyes. "I'm completely fine, Julian."
Julian let out a ragged breath, pulling her slightly toward him in a protective, instinctive gesture before turning his cold, lethal glare toward the floor.
Arthur groaned, pushing himself up on one elbow, blood trickling down his forehead. "Julian... wait... listen to me... she set me up—"
"Shut your mouth," Julian said, his voice dropping into a register so cold it felt sub-zero.
He didn't look at his cousin as if he were family. He looked at him the way an apex predator looks at a parasite clinging to its hide.
"Marcus," Julian commanded without breaking eye contact with Arthur. "Call the federal marshals. Not the local police. Federal. Wire fraud, corporate espionage, and attempted assault on an executive officer. Make sure he never sees daylight outside of a maximum-security cell."
May you like
"Right away, Mr. Thorne," Marcus said, grabbing Arthur by the collar and hauling him up off the glass-strewn floor as if he weighed nothing at all.
Arthur’s frantic screams echoed down the corridor as he was dragged toward the freight elevator, fighting and thrashing all the way.
