Chapter 6
Nico left the hospital at 10:26 p.m.
He hated leaving.
Sienna saw it.
“Go.”
He stood beside her bed.
“I can stay.”
“No.”
“Mila—”
“Has hospital security, police, your bodyguards, and me.”
Sienna looked down at Luca.
“Your company is being stolen.”
Nico’s mouth tightened.
“It’s a company.”
“It’s your life.”
“No.”
He looked at Mila.
Then Luca.
“This is my life.”
Sienna’s eyes softened.
“Then protect the thing that pays for all those bodyguards.”
Despite everything, he smiled.
“Bossy.”
“Runs in the family.”
Gavin stood in the corridor when Nico emerged.
“I’m coming.”
“No.”
“Dad.”
“I need someone I can trust.”
Gavin’s face tightened.
“You trusted me once.”
“That is precisely the issue.”
Gavin stepped in front of him.
“If Mom is at the board meeting, I can identify what she manipulated.”
“My attorneys can do that.”
“I know her passwords.”
Nico stopped.
Gavin continued.
“I know the Vale contact structure. I know which directors she’s been speaking to.”
“You knew that before tonight?”
“Some of it.”
“And didn’t tell me.”
“Yes.”
Nico stared at him.
“Every useful thing you say comes attached to a confession.”
“Then use the useful part.”
That surprised Nico.
Gavin looked exhausted.
“I’m not asking you to forgive me.”
“Good.”
“I’m asking you to let me help stop her.”
Nico looked toward Detective Brooks.
She had been listening.
“You planning to arrest him?”
“Not yet.”
Gavin stared at her.
“Comforting.”
Brooks ignored him.
“I’d rather know where he is.”
Nico nodded.
“Then he comes.”
They left.
At Ferrante Tower, the lobby was nearly empty.
But the forty-second floor was alive.
Attorneys.
Board members.
Assistants.
Security.
Marjorie had turned a corporate ambush into a midnight ceremony.
When the elevator opened, conversations stopped.
Nico walked out first.
Gavin followed.
Whispers moved through the hallway.
Nico did not slow down.
The boardroom doors opened.
Marjorie sat at the far end of the table.
Perfect posture.
Perfect hair.
Perfect cream suit.
She looked nothing like a woman who had been thrown into a car-cover rack two hours earlier.
“Nico.”
He entered.
“You clean up quickly.”
She smiled.
“You always loved dramatic entrances.”
“And you always mistook patience for blindness.”
Several directors avoided eye contact.
Nico recognized fear.
Not loyalty.
Marjorie had shown them documents.
Enough to make them uncertain.
Uncertainty was dangerous in boardrooms.
Nico sat across from her.
Gavin remained behind him.
Marjorie looked at her son.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
Gavin laughed without humor.
“You framed me for kidnapping my daughter.”
A director looked shocked.
Marjorie barely reacted.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Ryan Keller.”
Nothing changed in her face.
“Should that name mean something?”
“He received twenty-five thousand dollars from my company.”
“Then perhaps you should explain why.”
Gavin stepped forward.
“You had access.”
“So did you.”
Nico watched her closely.
Marjorie was too calm.
That meant she believed she still had something they did not.
Nico opened the emergency petition on the conference display.
“This signature is forged.”
Marjorie folded her hands.
“You say that.”
“Sienna says that.”
“Convenient.”
Gavin stared at his mother.
“She was giving birth while you filed this.”
Marjorie finally showed emotion.
A flicker of irritation.
“Your personal life has already damaged this family enough.”
Gavin looked stunned.
“My son was born tonight.”
“Yes. And yet here you are.”
The hypocrisy almost made him laugh.
“You dragged me into this.”
“I tried to save you.”
“You used me.”
“I gave you opportunities.”
“You gave me debts.”
“I paid your debts.”
“You made sure I owed you.”
Marjorie’s eyes sharpened.
“You sound like Sienna.”
“Maybe I should have listened to her sooner.”
Marjorie looked at Nico.
“There. That is why you cannot allow emotional people to control serious assets.”
Nico leaned back.
“You’re calling your son emotional after arranging an attempted kidnapping of his daughter?”
A board member whispered, “What?”
Marjorie’s voice hardened.
“That accusation is grotesque.”
“Police have the man.”
“Then police can investigate.”
“They are.”
For the first time, uncertainty flashed across her face.
Good.
Nico saw it.
He continued.
“And they’re investigating the dead employee credential he carried.”
Marjorie’s fingers tightened.
There.
Gavin saw it too.
“Mom?”
She looked at him.
“You knew about the badge.”
“No.”
“You reacted.”
“Don’t be childish.”
Gavin walked closer.
“Samuel Price.”
Marjorie looked away for less than a second.
Gavin’s expression changed.
“Oh my God.”
Nico watched him.
“What?”
Gavin stared at his mother.
“Samuel Price worked for you.”
Marjorie said nothing.
Gavin turned to Nico.
“Before he died.”
“I know he worked in facilities.”
“No. For her personally.”
Nico frowned.
“What are you talking about?”
“I saw him at her house.”
“When?”
“Maybe three years ago.”
Marjorie interrupted.
“Samuel occasionally handled household security.”
Gavin shook his head.
“No. He brought you boxes from Dad’s office.”
The boardroom became quiet.
Nico stared at Marjorie.
“What boxes?”
“Old files.”
“What files?”
“Nico, this is absurd.”
“What files?”
Marjorie’s composure cracked slightly.
“Estate records.”
“Why?”
“You asked me to organize them.”
“I never asked you to remove anything from my office.”
She looked toward the directors.
“This is becoming a domestic argument.”
Nico stood.
“No. It became a domestic argument when you used my pregnant daughter-in-law’s identity to steal twelve million dollars.”
A board member raised his hand.
“Nico, we cannot assume—”
Nico swung toward him.
“Thomas, if you interrupt me to defend fraud, make sure you know whose fraud you’re defending.”
Thomas stopped.
Nico faced Marjorie again.
“What did Samuel take?”
Marjorie stayed silent.
Gavin suddenly remembered something.
“Dad.”
“What?”
“The red archive.”
Nico stared at him.
“What about it?”
“When I was a kid, you kept a red archive binder in the home office.”
Nico’s face changed.
Marjorie looked at Gavin sharply.
He saw it.
“So you remember.”
Nico’s voice lowered.
“That archive contained original formation documents.”
Gavin nodded.
“And the first family partnership agreement?”
“Yes.”
Marjorie stood.
“This is irrelevant.”
Nico’s eyes never left her.
“No. It isn’t.”
He understood now.
The original partnership agreement contained a clause almost nobody remembered.
Because Nico had never needed it.
When the company was founded, Nico’s father had insisted that if a Ferrante family member attempted to transfer controlling interests under coercion, fraud, or incapacity, voting authority automatically reverted to the senior surviving founder’s designated bloodline trustee.
At the time, the clause had seemed old-fashioned.
Nico’s father had been paranoid about outsiders.
If Marjorie possessed the original document, she might have altered or substituted it.
Nico looked at Gavin.
“Where is the red archive?”
“I don’t know.”
Marjorie smiled faintly.
That was the first time she looked confident again.
Nico noticed.
“You have it.”
“I have many family records.”
“Where?”
“If you removed me tonight based on accusations, I would have no reason to cooperate.”
Gavin stared at her.
“You’re bargaining?”
“I’m being practical.”
Nico laughed.
“This isn’t a negotiation.”
“Everything is.”
One of Nico’s attorneys entered the room quickly and whispered in his ear.
Nico listened.
Then looked at Marjorie.
The attorney handed him a printed court order.
Nico placed it on the table.
“Not this.”
Marjorie glanced down.
Her face changed.
Emergency injunction.
The board petition was frozen.
Any transfer of voting authority suspended.
Any midnight closing halted.
Nico watched her read.
“You lost.”
Marjorie looked up.
“No.”
Her calm returned too quickly.
Nico felt it.
Something was wrong.
She gathered her purse.
“You stopped one transaction.”
Gavin frowned.
“What does that mean?”
Marjorie walked toward the door.
Nico’s bodyguard blocked her.
She smiled.
“Am I being detained?”
Nico looked at Detective Brooks, who had entered behind them.
Brooks approached.
“Marjorie Ferrante?”
“Yes.”
“I have questions regarding Ryan Keller.”
“Then contact my attorney.”
“I intend to.”
Marjorie held out her wrists sarcastically.
“Do you have a warrant?”
“Not yet.”
“Then I’m leaving.”
Brooks stepped aside.
Marjorie walked toward the elevator.
Before the doors closed, she looked at Gavin.
Not Nico.
Gavin.
And said:
“You should call your wife before she learns what you did seven years ago.”
The elevator doors closed.
Gavin stopped breathing.
Nico slowly turned.
“What happened seven years ago?”
Gavin’s face had gone gray.
“Nothing.”
Nico stared at him.
“Do not make that mistake again.”
Gavin looked toward the dark elevator doors.
May you like
His mother had saved one secret for exactly this moment.
And judging by his face, it was worse than everything else.
