Chapter 21: The Unshakable Throne
Victor stumbled backward, his knees literally buckling. One of his lawyers had to grab his arm to keep him from collapsing onto the carpet.
The ruthless corporate raider, the man who had terrified Wall Street for decades, was hyperventilating. He was watching his entire life's work vaporize in front of his eyes.
"You're bankrupting me," Victor wheezed, tears of sheer panic welling in his eyes. "You're taking everything!"
"I am taking exactly what you tried to take from my children," I replied coldly. "Nothing more. Nothing less."
I looked at Vance, who was standing by the door with a perfectly stoic expression.
"Vance," I ordered. "Escort Mr. Sterling off my property. And ensure he is permanently added to the global blacklist for all our corporate buildings."
Victor didn't fight back. He didn't scream or make threats. He was completely, utterly broken. As the security guards gently but firmly took his arms and led him out of the boardroom, he looked back at me with a gaze of pure, unfiltered terror.
He had walked in expecting to slaughter a lamb. He had walked into the jaws of a leviathan.
When the heavy glass doors finally clicked shut, the silence in the room was completely different from the day before. It wasn't tense. It was absolute.
Marcus let out a breath he had been holding for twenty-four hours, looking at me with a mixture of awe and absolute reverence.
Daniel walked over to the desk. He looked down at the red folder, then looked up at me. A slow, deeply proud smile spread across his face.
"You didn't just beat him," Daniel murmured. "You made an example out of him."
"Anyone who looks at this family," I said quietly, looking out the window at the sprawling, magnificent city skyline, "will know exactly what happens if they try to touch what is ours."
I walked around the desk, standing shoulder to shoulder with the father of my children.
We had survived the betrayal of a marriage. We had dismantled a toxic matriarch. We had crushed the ghosts of the past, and we had just annihilated one of the most dangerous men in the financial world.
I was Lauren Parker.
May you like
I was a mother. I was a survivor.
And as I looked out over the empire that I had forged through fire and blood, I knew, with absolute certainty, that my reign had only just begun.
