Chapter 3 - The Fall of the Harts"Daniel... please!" Margaret weeping hysterically, clutching her silk gown as she looked up at me from the stairs. "Harrison Hart promised he would protect the family name! He promised the board would support you! That nanny girl has no family, no background! She's a nobody!"
"She is the woman my wife chosen for our son, Mother," I answered flatly.
I reached into my inner coat pocket, pulling out a faded, hand-written letter written in my late wife Claire’s delicate penmanship three years ago, before she passed away giving birth to Noah.
I laid the letter flat on the mahogany table beside the corrupt merger papers.
The sentence Claire had written in her final hours illuminated the room:
“If another woman ever makes our boy feel safe, please don't let my memory stand between them. Love her, Daniel, as she loves our child.”
Vanessa Hart stared at the letter, her jaw trembling, her arrogant, sneering demeanor completely shattered into pathetic, panicked fragments. "Daniel... I didn't know about Switzerland! My father told me it was just a standard prenuptial agreement!"
"You slapped the woman holding my son, Vanessa," I said, stepping two inches from her face, my storm-gray eyes burning with an unshakeable, lethal steel. "You called her a worthless servant in my home. You threatened to erase her from my child's life."
I looked over my shoulder at my chief lieutenant, Leo, who had just descended the private elevator.
"Leo," I ordered cleanly.
"Don Daniel?"
"Call Prosecutor Aris Vance at the Federal District Court downtown," I commanded, every word dropped like a slab of cold granite. "Hand him the encrypted drive from this safe. Tell him to execute immediate RICO search warrants on Harrison Hart's shipping terminals in North Miami."
Vanessa let out a high-pitched, pathetic shriek, throwing herself flat onto her knees on the marble floorboards. "Daniel! No! My father will go to prison!"
"Your father is spending the next thirty years in a federal maximum-security penitentiary, Vanessa," I promised flatly. "And as for you... if you step within five miles of Grace Miller or my son ever again... I will make sure you don't have a single cent left to pay your rent."
Two broad-shouldered Cole enforcers grabbed Vanessa by her arms, dragging her screaming and thrashing flat across the marble foyer toward the iron gates outside.
May you like
I turned my head slowly, looking up at my mother sitting broken on the stairs.
"Pack your bags, Mother," I spoke softly. "A car will take you to the family estate in Vermont at six o'clock tomorrow morning. You are permanently removed from the Cole Family Trust. You will never set foot in this house again."
Related Stories
