Chapter 5 - The Boardroom Blitz
I wore a sharp, charcoal-gray suit, my military lapel pin resting subtly on the collar. My posture was perfectly straight, the ghost of my injury entirely invisible.
Vance and I walked into the glass-walled boardroom of my parents' corporate headquarters. Sitting at the long mahogany table were my father, looking ten years older with deep bags under his eyes, and my mother, nervously twisting a diamond ring on her finger. Chloe was there too, glaring at her phone, pouting about her ruined life.
They didn't look up when we entered.
“Mr. Sterling,” my father said to Vance, his voice devoid of its usual arrogant boom. “Thank you for coming. We are prepared to sign the Aegis documents. We surrender the equity, the house, everything. Just… execute the buyout so the FBI doesn't look at our ledgers.”
Vance didn't sit down. He stood at the head of the table. “I am merely legal counsel, Richard. The CEO of Aegis Holdings is the one who requires your signatures.”
My father looked up, confused. “I thought Aegis was a faceless trust.”
I stepped out from behind Vance, pulling out the heavy leather chair at the head of the table, and sat down. I placed my completely healed, fully functional hands flat on the polished wood.
“Hello, Dad. Mom. Chloe.”
The silence that followed was absolute. It was the kind of silence that happens right before a bomb detonates.
My mother’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. My father stared at me as if he were looking at a ghost. Chloe finally looked up from her phone, her eyes widening in pure shock.
“Sarah?” my father choked out. “What… what are you doing here? How did you get in here? Security!”
“I wouldn't call security, Richard,” Vance said coldly. “You might have them throw out the owner of your company.”
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My father’s face went from pale white to a furious, violent red. “This is a joke. This is some kind of sick, twisted joke! You are a disabled, broke soldier! You begged me for six thousand dollars!”
“I did,” I said, my voice eerily calm. “And you told me the timing was bad because you just bought a Porsche. A Porsche you bought with stolen money.”
