Chapter 3 - What Finally Stopped HimI turned toward the gate. His hand closed around my wrist and yanked me backward, sending my phone sliding across the marble floor.
"You are not taking my company," he shouted.
A terminal security officer crossed the room and pulled him off me while Marcus retrieved my phone.
"It was never your company," I said. "You were trusted to lead it."
Weston struggled until the officer warned him to stop. Vivian stood between us with the signed resolution in her hand. That was what finally stopped him — not another man, not someone waiting to rescue me. The board's votes. My father's legacy. The plain truth that every bit of power Weston had ever flaunted came from the family he'd tried to defraud.
His anger curdled into bargaining. "Louisa, listen. Priya means nothing. I panicked. The baby—"
"Your son means something," I said. "He deserves a father who doesn't abandon him on his first day alive. Go back to the hospital."
"If you board that plane, we're finished."
I took off my wedding ring and set it down on top of the suspension notice.
"That was the announcement."
May you like
Security walked Weston back outside. Through the glass, I watched him call Priya. She answered just long enough to scream at him before hanging up.
In Portland, we stopped the acquisition twelve minutes before signing. The outside audit that followed uncovered $4.6 million in diverted funds — far more than Renata's first review had found. Aldergate terminated Weston and Priya for cause. The Justice Department later charged both of them with wire fraud and conspiracy. They accepted plea agreements requiring full restitution. Weston also lost his stock options under the misconduct clause he'd once insisted on adding to executive contracts himself.
