Chapter 4 - The Panicked Proxy
The elevator doors had barely sealed before Vanessa spun around, grabbing her phone from the marble counter. Her hands were shaking so violently she almost dropped the device onto the floor.
"Vanessa, what was that about?" Adrian asked, stepping toward her, his face filled with concern. "My dad looked... strange. And why did he say that about his hand? What happened?"
"Nothing, Adrian!" Vanessa snapped, her voice far sharper than she had ever used with him before.
Adrian flinched, taking a step back. "Vanessa?"
Recognizing her mistake immediately, Vanessa forced her expression to soften, rushing over to press her face against his chest. "I'm sorry, darling. I'm just... I'm overwhelmed. Meeting your father... he's such an imposing figure. And I'm so worried about the foundation's funding."
"It's fine," Adrian said slowly, though a faint shadow of doubt had crossed his eyes for the first time in fourteen months. "He's just old-fashioned. He likes to test people."
"I need to go see my mother," Vanessa whispered, pulling away. "We have to finalize the seating charts for the rehearsal dinner."
Without waiting for his answer, she ran down the hall toward the master suite, pulled off her silk robe, and threw on a plain black trench coat and sunglasses. Five minutes later, she was stepping out of the building's private garage in the back of a hired black sedan, avoiding the main entrance entirely.
She dialed her mother's cell phone.
"Celeste," Vanessa almost screamed into the receiver the moment the call connected. "We have a massive problem. A catastrophic problem."
"What are you talking about, Vanessa?" Celeste’s voice was languid, slurred slightly by her morning mimosa. "I’m at the spa at the Carlyle—"
"Get out of the spa!" Vanessa shrieked. "The gatekeeper from last night! The old man with the cane!"
"What about him? Did he die? Tell the lawyers to offer his family fifty thousand dollars to sign a non-disclosure—"
"It was Silas Vale!"
Silence descended on the line. The heavy, suffocating silence of a trap springing shut.
"What?" Celeste whispered, her voice suddenly sober.
"It was Silas Vale!" Vanessa repeated, tears of rage and terror spilling down her cheeks behind her dark sunglasses. "He was dressed in a guard's uniform! He was wearing a fake name badge! He was testing me, Celeste! And I... I kicked his cane! I had security throw him into the rain!"
"Oh my God," Celeste gasped. "Oh my God, Vanessa... tell me you didn't say anything to him."
"I told him that people like him survive because people like me allow it!" Vanessa choked out, gripping the door handle of the sedan so hard her knuckles turned white. "And he came to the penthouse twenty minutes ago! He looked me right in the eye and showed me his bandaged hand!"
"Did he tell Adrian?"
"No," Vanessa said, trying to think through the blinding fog of panic. "No, he didn't tell him. He's playing with me. He wants me to sweat. He froze the forty-million-dollar transfer last night right after it happened."
"If that transfer doesn't clear by Friday, the Swiss bank will default on the Geneva account!" Celeste panicked. "The director of the psychiatric facility said they will release Richard if the monthly wire isn't paid!"
Vanessa stood up straight in the back seat, her mind racing. "If my father gets out, if he talks to the press or to Silas’s investigators, we won't just be poor, Celeste. We’ll go to prison for wire fraud and embezzlement!"
"What are we going to do?" Celeste wept. "Can we apologize? Can we go to Silas and say it was a misunderstanding? Say you were stressed—"
"Are you stupid?" Vanessa spat, her voice cold as steel. "Silas Vale built an empire on blood and legal battles. He doesn't forgive. He destroys. If he hasn't told Adrian yet, it's because he's gathering evidence to ruin us completely before he breaks the engagement."
"Then what do we do?"
Vanessa looked out the window at the gray towers of Manhattan passing by.
"We strike first," Vanessa whispered, her eyes narrowing into two slits of pure malice. "Adrian holds twenty percent of Vale Global’s voting shares in his personal trust. If we can force the marriage through before Silas presents his evidence, or if we can get Adrian to execute the emergency proxy transfer... Silas won't be able to remove me without tanking his own stock."
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"How are you going to get Adrian to do that?"
"Adrian trusts me," Vanessa said softly, a dark, desperate smile returning to her lips. "He thinks his father is a cold, controlling monster who abandoned him after his mother died. I’m going to make sure he keeps thinking that."
