Chapter 8 - The Shadow Hunt
Vanessa gasped, horror paralyzing her heart. "Lily! Layla!"
Vance didn't panic. He didn't even blink.
Instead, a slow, terrifying smile spread across his face—a look of pure predatory pleasure that made every board member in the room shiver.
"You really didn't do your homework on me, did you, Chester?" Vance said quietly.
Vance reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, clicking the speakerphone on.
【Boss,】 Kaelen’s calm voice came through the speaker. 【The four men Chester sent to the perimeter of the estate have been neutralized. They didn't even make it past the tree line. Lily and Layla are currently eating ice cream and watching cartoons.】
Chester’s phone slipped from his trembling hands, shattering on the marble floor. "No... no, impossible..."
"Did you really think a mid-level corporate thief could outsmart a Navy SEAL who ran black ops for a decade?" Vance asked softly.
Vance walked up to Chester, grabbed him by the collar of his thousand-dollar suit, and lifted him completely off his feet with one hand, slamming him against the glass window overlooking the city skyline.
"You put a military bug in a little girl's head," Vance whispered into Chester’s ear, his tone so cold it froze the blood in Chester’s veins. "You stole her childhood. You stole her mother's peace. You brought the Moretti family into my city. And now... you belong to me."
"Please!" Chester begged, weeping hysterically as he hovered sixty stories above the pavement. "Please, Thorne! I was just following orders! Don't kill me!"
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"Kill you?" Vance sneered, dropping him unceremoniously onto the carpet. "Death is too easy. Federal agents are waiting in the lobby. You're going to spent the rest of your natural life in a maximum-security federal supermax where every inmate knows what you did to a deaf child."
Two FBI agents rushed into the room, slapping heavy steel handcuffs onto Chester's wrists and dragging the wailing former chairman out of the boardroom in front of dozens of flashing news cameras.
