Chapter 2 - The Scent of Panic
Nathan struggled against the agent's grip, his face pressed hard against the cold marble.
"Elena! Tell them!" he choked out, his eyes wide with frantic desperation.
"We can talk about this! I was stressed! The company was under immense pressure!"
"Celeste manipulated me! She convinced me you were sabotaging the firm!"
Across the room, Celeste’s eyes widened in sheer disbelief.
"You pathetic coward!" she shrieked at Nathan.
"You brought the whip out! You ordered the guards away! You told me you were going to break her so she'd sign the divorce papers without demanding a single dime!"
"Shut up, Celeste!" Nathan bellowed, his voice cracking.
I watched them turn on each other with a cold, detached fascination.
For four years, I had watched them whisper together in dark corners of this estate.
I had watched them laugh over dinners I prepared, exchange secret glances across boardroom tables, and plan my quiet, methodical destruction.
And it had taken less than five minutes for their grand romance to rot into pure malice.
My father reached into his pocket and pulled out a small black tablet.
He tapped the screen once, activating the main display monitor on the wall of the grand hall.
The dark security screens flickered to life.
"You believed you turned off the security cameras, Nathaniel," my father said softly, turning to face him for the first time.
The screen illuminated the room in bright HD clarity.
On the monitor, the entire scene played out in excruciating detail.
Nathan raising the whip.
Celeste sipping her champagne.
The lazy, cruel banter.
The deliberate count to two hundred.
Every strike, every drop of blood, every mocking laugh was captured from four separate angles—including the high-definition feed broadcast directly from my sapphire pendant.
"This feed didn't just record locally," my father explained, his tone conversational, almost clinical.
"It was broadcast live to the Department of Justice, the International Maritime Regulatory Board, and the board of directors of Ashford Global."
"Right now, every major shareholder, bank lender, and government official on three continents is watching you beat your wife for your mistress's entertainment."
Nathan’s face turned from pale to an ash-gray hue.
"No..." he gasped. "No, no, no..."
"Your stock price opened in London twenty minutes ago," my father continued mercilessly.
"It has dropped eighty-two percent."
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"By the time the New York Exchange opens in four hours, Ashford Global Logistics will no longer exist."
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