Daniel’s breath hitched. “That’s a lie! She fell! You can’t prove anything!”
“I don’t have to,” Margaret continued, leaning forward, resting her hands on the table. “Because alongside those medical reports are the comprehensive, unredacted audits conducted by Arthur Sterling’s forensic team. The audits proving that over the last four years, you have actively embezzled over four million dollars from the private pension accounts of your firm’s most elite, powerful clients.”
Daniel’s face turned the color of wet cement. The blood drained from his extremities. The reality of his complete, inescapable annihilation crashed over him with the force of a tidal wave. The abuse might have been difficult to prove in a corrupt local court, but stealing millions from wealthy investors was a federal crime that guaranteed decades in a maximum-security penitentiary.
He was cornered. His money was frozen. His wife was gone. His crimes were exposed.
The narcissistic rage completely overrode his basic survival instincts.
“You crazy, interfering old witch!” Daniel roared, his face twisting into a demonic, feral mask of pure, unadulterated violence. “I’ll kill you! I’ll snap your neck!”
Daniel lunged forward, throwing a leather chair out of his way, sprinting the length of the table with his hands outstretched, intending to strangle the woman who had destroyed his life.
He never made it past the center of the room.
Before Daniel could cross the remaining distance, the heavy side doors of the boardroom—the doors leading to the private executive ante-room—violently burst open.
Four heavily armed federal agents in tactical windbreakers, accompanied by two massive city homicide detectives, swarmed into the room like a synchronized, lethal strike force. They had been waiting silently in the adjoining room, listening to the entire exchange through a live audio feed.
