Chapter 423
Liam’s jaw tightened, a muscle ticking in his cheek. “Then Braydon gets the full file. He will present it to the Elders, and they will force Dallas to step down for being an unstable, violent liability.”
I stared at him, horrified. I had just helped Adella and Dallas secure a massive victory, and now I was being pressed into service as the messenger for an even deadlier crisis.
Liam shoved a small slip of paper with a secure phone number into my numb hand. “You have twenty hours, Lena. Tell her.”
Without another word, the doctor turned and walked away, his shoulders hunched beneath the weight of his treason.
I stood alone in the quiet alcove. The folder in my arms suddenly felt as though it weighed a thousand pounds.
I looked toward the stainless-steel doors at the end of the hall, terrified of the devastating blow I was about to deliver to the man and woman I had sworn to serve.
The Council Chamber at Marshall Tower smelled of polished obsidian and the sharp, metallic stench of pure terror.
After Lena had tremblingly delivered Liam Barber’s blackmail ultimatum that morning, Eleanor “Gigi” Marshall decided the Pack needed a brutal reminder of the cost of corporate espionage.
Pippa knelt on the cold floor, sobbing uncontrollably. Dallas sat beside me in his wheelchair, his expression carved from stone.
Gigi didn’t even offer the trembling girl a trial. She stood tall — a matriarch forged in iron.
“For crimes against the Founding Covenant, and for conspiring to commit fraud against the Pack,” Gigi’s voice cracked through the silent room like a whip, “you are terminated and blacklisted. Security will escort you off the premises.”
Two massive guards stepped forward, hauling Pippa to her feet by her arms.
“No!” Pippa shrieked, her heels scraping desperately against the floor as they dragged her toward the heavy double doors. “Braydon promised me! He promised he would give me a job at his firm!”
As the doors slammed shut and cut off her wails, Gigi and I exchanged a hard, victorious look. We had purged an internal threat and gained direct justification to strike at Braydon legally. But as I studied Dallas’s clenched jaw, I knew the war was far from over.
By nightfall, the tension in the penthouse had become unbearable. Dallas and I sat in heavy silence, the weight of Liam’s impending betrayal hanging over us like a guillotine.
Then the massive television screen on the wall flashed with an emergency news broadcast.
There, on the familiar stone steps of the Hyde estate, stood Braydon. He was protectively cradling a weeping Katherine Parrish against his chest.
“Katherine is a brave whistleblower,” Braydon told the cameras, his face a sickening mask of righteous indignation. “She was maliciously fired for trying to expose the Marshall empire’s deep-rooted corruption. To protect her, and to merge our shared interests in seeking justice, I am proud to announce our engagement.”
With a smooth, calculated motion, he dropped to one knee and slid a ring onto Katherine’s finger.
A fake alliance of victims — designed to legally challenge our every move in both the press and the boardroom.