Chapter 8 - Traces of the Syndicate
Brielle gasped, her face flushing crimson with humiliation and rage. "You can't do this! The Cartwright group holds forty percent of your shipping logistics! My father will ruin you by morning!"
"Let him try," Adrian said calmly. He signaled to the security guards standing near the elevator. "Escort Miss Cartwright out. If she returns to this floor, you are both fired."
"You're making a mistake, Adrian!" Brielle shouted as the guards politely but firmly guided her back into the elevator cabin. "She's using you! She was paid off!"
The elevator doors closed, cutting off her voice mid-sentence.
The apartment returned to a heavy, suffocating silence.
Mara stood by the couch, her shoulders shaking slightly. The shock of the evening—the confrontation, the truth about the coma, the sudden destruction of Adrian’s high-society engagement—was overwhelming.
Adrian walked over to his desk near the window, unlocked a hidden wall safe behind a dark oak panel, and pulled out an encrypted tablet. He tapped the glass rapidly, bringing up old internal communication logs from the Blackwood security network dated six years ago.
"Vance," Adrian said into his earpiece.
"Sir?"
"Pull the gate surveillance archives from the Long Island estate, November 2020. I want the names of every guard stationed at the perimeter on the twelfth."
There was a brief pause on the line. "Sir... those records were archived by your father's personal secretary, Donald Royce, before he passed away last year."
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"Find them," Adrian commanded. "And bring my legal team to the penthouse at seven in the morning. I am filing for full legal acknowledgment of four heirs."
Mara stepped forward, her voice rising in sudden panic. "No! Adrian, no! You aren't taking my boys!"
