Chapter 9
“Let them freeze,” Julian whispered.
The room seemed to drop ten degrees.
Arthur stopped praying. Victoria gasped. Croft froze.
Julian shifted his hand from my back, his fingers sliding up to cup the side of my neck. His thumb stroked gently across my cheekbone, his skin hot, rough, and tender against mine. In front of his mother, in front of his uncle, in front of the most powerful corporate lawyer in Manhattan, Julian Sterling leaned in until his lips were barely an inch from mine.
“Let every single asset they have freeze to the ground,” Julian murmured, his voice rich with an emotion so thick and genuine it made my knees feel weak. “She did the work, Croft. She came here, she suffered through my mother’s poisoned tea, she listened to Arthur’s cowardly whining, and she tore your thirty-page surrender agreement to shreds without breaking a sweat.”
Julian turned his head slightly, his gaze finally cutting toward the three trembling aristocrats on the other side of the desk.
“Clara Vance is the only person in this room who has displayed an ounce of integrity today,” Julian said, his baritone ringing through the vaulted study like a bronze bell. “She asked for what she earned. Not a cent more. Not a cent less. And if this family thinks they can cheat her out of her wage because they have antique furniture and an army of corporate retainers, then you deserve every single regulatory catastrophe that’s about to hit you at three o’clock.”
My heart hammered violently against my ribs.
The air between Julian and me felt charged with static electricity, thick and heavy and impossible to breathe. This wasn't acting. This wasn't performance art to repel Genevieve van der Bilt.
The way his fingers lingered against my jaw, the fierce, unyielding protectiveness radiating from his body, the way he stood between me and his entire empire without a shred of hesitation—it was terrifyingly, overwhelmingly real.
“Julian...” Victoria choked out, tears of sheer panic finally welling in her eyes, threatening to ruin her expensive mascara. “Please. You’re destroying us. You’re handing her the executioner’s axe.”
“No, Mother,” Julian said coldly, his hand sliding down to intertwine firmly with mine, our fingers locking together in an unbreakable grip. “You brought the axe on yourself when you tried to shortchange her. You have eleven minutes. I suggest you start typing.”
Victoria looked down at the desk. Her chest heaved. Her hands were shaking so violently that her gold charm bracelet rattled against the walnut wood like dry bones.
She looked at Croft. Croft stood there, his jaw clenched, utterly powerless, holding his blue-ribboned surrender contract that had just been rendered completely useless by an hourly temp with an eight-gigabyte penguin drive.
“We can’t fight a statutory administrative filing, Victoria,” Croft muttered, his voice sounding completely defeated. “The moment it hits the public docket, the credit agencies flag the dispute. The Frankfurt covenants will breach before breakfast. We have to yield.”
Victoria let out a broken, shuddering sob.
She reached into the inner drawer of her walnut desk and pulled out a heavy, gold-embossed document bound in red leather—the primary family trust surrender ledger, bearing the Sterling corporate seal.
With trembling fingers, she picked up a gold fountain pen. Her hands were shaking so hard she could barely uncap it. She began scribbling furiously on the primary transfer clause, amending the corporate registry, her breath coming in ragged, terrified gasps.
The grandfather clock in the corner chimed the three-quarter hour.
**00:03:15**
Three minutes and fifteen seconds.
Victoria shoved the signed corporate surrender document across the desk with shaking hands. The heavy parchment slid over the blotter, coming to a halt directly beneath my fingertips.
Her face was paper-white, stripped of all aristocratic poise, every trace of her five-figure beauty treatments crumbling under the weight of pure, existential panic. She leaned forward, tears spilling down her cheeks, her voice dropping into a desperate, hollow whisper that trembled with the terror of a fallen dynasty.
“If we give you this board seat, Miss Vance,” Victoria whispered, her hands clawing desperately at the edge of the wood, “do you swear the SEC never sees that file?”
I stared down at the paper, my eyes narrowing at the dense legal print and the frantic gold ink signatures.
*Board seat? SEC?*
They were still doing it. Even with three minutes on the clock, this woman was still trying to shove another piece of useless corporate paper across the desk to dodge an immediate direct-deposit wire. She thought she could give me an imaginary corporate title to delay my five-thousand-dollar cash payment!
My blood turned to ice.
I raised my cracked smartphone in my left hand, holding it right in front of Victoria’s face. My thumb hovered directly over the glowing red button that would dispatch the scheduled statutory claim and blast the dispute notice.
I looked Victoria Sterling dead in the eye, my voice dropping into a cold, lethal whisper that brooked no argument.
“Sign the wire, Mrs. Sterling,” I said, “or Manhattan finds out what you’re really worth in five seconds.”
