Chapter 1 - THE BROADCAST BEGINS
The rifle barrel slammed into my shattered collarbone, sending white fire through my body.
Still, I refused to move.
I stood between my fiancé, Adrian Blackwood, and his grandfather, Lord Edmund Blackwood, while blood soaked the neckline of my dress and dripped onto the priceless Persian carpet beneath my feet.
“If Adrian won’t throw you back into the gutter,” Edmund said, grinding the heated steel against my injured shoulder, “I’ll shoot the poverty out of you myself.”
Behind me, two estate guards held Adrian by the arms.
His lip was split. One eye was swelling.
“Grandfather, stop! You’ll kill her!”
“That is the point.”
Twenty minutes earlier, Edmund had invited us to Blackwood Hall under the pretense of offering his blessing for our engagement.
Instead, the doors had locked behind us.
The guards seized Adrian.
Edmund struck me with the rifle stock hard enough to break my collarbone.
For two years, he had treated me like dirt beneath the Blackwood family shoes.
He believed I was nothing more than a poor charity worker who had seduced his grandson.
He had offered me money to disappear.
He hired journalists to dig through my childhood.
When I still refused to leave Adrian, Edmund quietly arranged for me to lose my position at the housing foundation.
What he never bothered discovering was who I had been before that job.
For six years, I had investigated corporate fraud for the Financial Conduct Authority.
And three months earlier, Adrian had found irregularities inside the Blackwood conglomerate.
Pension accounts were being drained.
Unsafe factories were hidden behind shell corporations.
Workers who tried to speak had been threatened.
Adrian wanted to confront his grandfather immediately.
I stopped him.
Edmund controlled too many lawyers, newspapers, politicians, and board members.
Accusations could vanish.
Evidence could not.
So while Edmund insulted my clothes and mocked my upbringing, I quietly built a case.
Four independent Blackwood directors were already waiting in an emergency video session.
My brooch contained a camera.
My watch transmitted sound.
They needed proof Edmund remained an active danger to the company.
Edmund raised the rifle toward my heart.
“Last chance,” he told Adrian. “Renounce her.”
Adrian looked at me.
Despite the blood on his teeth, he understood exactly what I needed him to do.
“Never.”
My fingers slipped beneath my torn sleeve.
I pressed the concealed button on my watch.
A faint vibration touched my wrist.
The broadcast began.
Edmund smiled because he still believed he owned the room.
He did not know that hundreds of miles away, four directors had just watched him point a loaded rifle at the future head of the Blackwood family.
And on their screens, an emergency resolution appeared.
May you like
REMOVE EDMUND BLACKWOOD AS EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN.
Voting had opened.
