Chapter 4 - Walking Among the LivingThe silence that fell over the fiftieth-floor boardroom was so profound you could hear the hum of the air conditioning units fifty stories above the Manhattan streets.
Color drained completely from Adrian Harrison’s face. He gripped the edges of the podium so hard his knuckles turned translucent white. His mouth opened, but no sound came out—just a low, strangled gasp like a man who had just seen a ghost crawl out of an open grave.
"N-Nathan?" Arthur Sterling whispered, stumbling up from his chair, clutching his chest. "Am I... am I losing my mind? You're..."
"Dead? Buried? Cold in the ground?" I finished for him, walking slowly down the center aisle toward the head of the table. My footsteps clicked rhythmically against the polished marble floor. "I assure you, Arthur, my health has never been better. Though I can't say the same for the corporate health of this company."
Adrian finally found his voice, though it shook violently despite his best efforts to maintain control. "Security! Security, get this man out of here! He's... this is an impostor! A deranged trespasser!"
"Shut up, Adrian," I snapped, my voice cutting through the room like a jagged blade of ice.
Marco stepped forward, resting his hand casually on the heavy Glock secured beneath his jacket, fixing the guards at the door with a glare that made them instantly second-guess their paychecks.
Isabella, who had been sitting quietly in the corner of the boardroom waiting to celebrate her coronation, let out a piercing shriek. She leaped from her chair, her eyes wide with animal panic, staring at me as if I were a demon returned from hell.
"No," she breathed, backing away until her spine hit the glass wall. "No! I watched you! You drank—you drank the glass! You were supposed to be dead!"
The moment the words left her mouth, a collective gasp echoed through the boardroom. The three corrupt board members stared at her in stunned horror. Detective Vance's audio recording from the precinct interrogation room—which Marco was currently streaming live to the boardroom monitors—flashed on the screen in bright, glowing letters: CONFESSION LOGGED.
"Thank you for confirming that publicly, darling," I said, stopping three feet away from Adrian, who looked like he wanted the floor to open up and swallow him whole. "Though, for the record, I prefer my iced tea without cyanide."
Adrian swallowed hard, trying desperately to salvage his shattered facade. "Nathan... Nathan, listen to me. It was a joke! A terrible, drunken joke! Isabella wasn't serious, she—"
"Quiet, Adrian," I said softly, stepping into his personal space until he was forced to lean back against the podium. "You spent three months planning an elaborate murder, bribing executives, forging proxy votes, and conspiring with my own wife to steal an empire I built with my bare hands. You thought you had outsmarted everyone."
I turned my gaze to Isabella, who was now trembling uncontrollably, tears of sheer terror streaming down her face.
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"You married me for my money, Isabella," I said, my voice devoid of any warmth or mercy. "You thought you'd be a wealthy widow by sunrise. Instead, you just signed your own confession on a live corporate broadcast watched by every federal prosecutor in the state."
The boardroom doors swung open again. But this time, it wasn't board members walking in. It was a squad of federal agents from the Department of Justice, led by Detective Vance, holding a stack of arrest warrants thick enough to stop a charging bull.
