Chapter 3 - The Panic Flight
It took less than twenty-four hours for the panic to set in. Without the corporate cards, my family was effectively stranded at a five-star resort they couldn't afford. They couldn't pay their massive bar tab, let alone the private jet fees to get home.
According to the desperate voicemails left on my work phone, Julian had to beg his pregnant fiancée, Chloe, to wire them money from her personal savings just to book commercial flights back to Seattle.
"They land in three hours," David informed me, checking a flight tracker on his iPad. We were sitting in the glass-walled conference room of our tech firm, Vance & Brooks Innovations. "Julian is threatening to sue us for breach of contract. Your father left a message saying he is going to have you committed for a mental breakdown."
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I laughed, a dry, hollow sound that echoed in the empty boardroom. "Let them try. Have security downstairs prep the lobby. If they try to enter the building, they are to be treated as hostile trespassers."
I looked out at the Seattle skyline. My husband and my beautiful seven-year-old boy were in the ground, and my family was worried about their credit score. The grief threatened to pull me under, a dark wave of agony. But I forced it down, replacing it with cold, hard fury. I wasn't just a widow anymore. I was an executioner.
