Chapter 9 - The Board of Wolves
The clock in the grand hallway struck midnight.
In the high-rise financial district five miles away, inside the glass-walled penthouse boardroom of the Martin Global Tower, seven men sat around an oval table made of dark obsidian. They were dressed in ten-thousand-dollar suits, sipping aged scotch, their faces lit by the ambient glow of stock tickers running across wall-mounted monitors.
At the head of the table sat Marcus Sterling—a sharp-featured, ruthless man in his early fifties who served as the vice-chairman of the board. He was the man who had ordered the hit on Walter’s eldest son, and the man who believed he was hours away from claiming the throne.
"The old man has been missing for seventy-two hours," Marcus said smoothly, swirling the dark amber liquid in his glass. "Our street team lost his signal near the waterfront. He’s eighty years old, sick with cancer, and wandering in a storm. He’s likely dead in a alley by now."
"What about his private attorney?" another board member asked nervously. "Arthur hasn't answered his encrypted line all evening."
"Arthur is a lapdog," Marcus sneered, leaning back in his leather executive chair. "Without Walter breathing orders down his neck, he's useless. At eight o'clock tomorrow morning, we declare an emergency board meeting, cite Walter’s mental incompetence, and execute the contingency buyout clause. We split the assets forty-sixty with the European consortium."
The men around the table chuckled, raising their glasses in a silent toast to corporate treason.
Suddenly, the heavy double doors of the boardroom clicked open.
The laughter died instantly.
Stepping into the room was not a team of high-powered corporate lawyers, nor was it the fragile, dying frame of Walter Martin.
It was Clara Vance.
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She was no longer wearing her wet green waitress shirt or grey apron. She wore a tailored, jet-black double-breasted suit, her fiery red hair pulled back into an elegant, commanding ponytail. Her eyes, usually soft and empathetic, were as cold and sharp as shards of green ice.
Flanking her were six heavily armed security operatives wearing dark tactical gear, followed closely by Arthur the attorney, who carried a leather briefcase under his arm.
