part 6
Dominic attempted to shout an objection, but his vocal cords completely failed him.
Right then, the boardroom doors were violently thrown open.
Valerie burst onto the floor weeping hysterically, her designer makeup smeared across her face, carrying a cardboard box filled with her desk items—a personal planner, cosmetics, and Dominic’s black engraved flask.
“Dominic, do something right now!” she shrieked, ignoring the board members. “The guards just physically escorted me out of my office like a common criminal! Tell these people that I am the woman who runs this floor!”
Every single eye at the table turned to look at Dominic. He looked at her as if she were a block of concrete chained directly around his throat.
“Shut your mouth,” he muttered through his teeth.
Valerie froze mid-step. “What?”
“I said shut your mouth!” he roared, his panic turning into venom. “This entire collapse is your fault! You pushed the timeline! You demanded the jewelry, the luxury travel, the executive titles, the cash! You dragged me into this structural disaster!”
The entire Board of Directors sat back, witnessing the exact millisecond their manufactured fairytale mutated into mutual destruction.
Valerie let out a sharp, broken laugh. “My fault? You swore to me that your wife was an incompetent ghost! You told me you had the board proxies completely bought and paid for! You promised me you were going to put her in her place!”
Dominic lunged across the table to physically silence her, but my security detail breached the perimeter before he could take two steps. Two guards pinned his arms behind his back with absolute force. Another two seized Valerie, who began violently screaming obscenities, hurling accusations of pure cowardice at him.
“You utilized me!” she shrieked as they dragged her toward the elevators. “You told me the entire conglomerate would belong to us!”
“You ruined my alignment!” he thundered back.
Their chaotic shouts echoed down the executive corridor until the elevator doors chimed shut, cutting off their voices permanently.
When the room fell back into silence, a strange sensation settled over my chest. It wasn’t a wave of triumphant joy. It was the feeling of a toxic, infected bandage finally being ripped completely clean from an old wound. It stung intensely, but for the first time in three years, I could breathe clean oxygen.
The board vote was absolute and unanimous.
Dominic Vance was suspended with cause. His security credentials, his personal bank routing links to the firm, and his operational signature were completely frozen by emergency injunction. Valerie was formally processed for corporate workplace assault, malicious harassment, document forgery, and direct participation in a grand larceny conspiracy.
The Board of Directors officially appointed me as interim Chief Executive Officer.
That afternoon, I stepped into the corner office that had belonged to my father, then to Dominic, and had now formally reverted to my family. The very first directive I issued to facilities was to have the executive sofa permanently removed from the floor. I ordered the suite deep-cleaned, the fixtures replaced, and every single personal effect Dominic had installed to make himself feel like a king completely cleared from the space.
Then, I sat down in the primary leather chair. And for a single minute, I allowed myself to weep.
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I wasn’t weeping for Dominic. I wasn’t weeping for a broken marriage. I wept entirely for my father. I wept because it had taken me three years to finally defend the legacy he had built with bleeding hands, sleepless nights, and a fierce faith that poverty could never break.
Then, I dried my face, opened the master ledger, and began the audit.
