"You Serve the Wine," His Fiancée Said—Then the Family Attorney Pulled Out My Chair | Part 1

Across the city, in a dimly lit, smoke-filled private club, Victoria Vale sat across from Richard Laurent.

She looked immaculate, as always, but there was a frantic, dangerous energy behind her eyes. Her assassin had failed. Silas had called her from a burner phone, bleeding out in a back alley, demanding double his fee to disappear.

"You look desperate, Victoria," Richard Laurent sneered, swirling a glass of fifty-year-old scotch. "It's an ugly look on you."

"Save the gloating, Richard," Victoria snapped. "Your daughter is the laughingstock of Manhattan, and your company is defaulting on its debt in exactly forty-eight hours. We need each other."

Richard leaned forward. "My legal team tells me the merger is dead. The bastard girl has a thirty percent stake, and Adrian holds twenty. They have a fifty percent block. We can't push it through."

"Unless," Victoria said smoothly, sliding a dossier across the table, "we dilute their shares."

Richard opened the folder, his eyebrows rising. "A hostile stock issuance? The board would have to approve issuing millions of new shares. It would tank the immediate value, but it would drop Elena and Adrian's combined voting power to forty percent. You and I could sweep up the new shares through shell companies."

"Exactly," Victoria smiled. "I control thirty percent. I have already secured the loyalty of three minor board members, which brings me to forty-five. We need one more vote to authorize the issuance. We need Marcus Harrison."

"Harrison is loyal to Edmund's memory," Richard warned. "He won't vote to dilute the family's power."

Victoria pulled a photograph from her designer handbag and tossed it onto the table. It showed Marcus Harrison, a married, conservative family man, exiting an illegal underground gambling ring, handing a thick envelope of cash to a known syndicate enforcer.

"Marcus Harrison has a gambling addiction he's been hiding from the SEC," Victoria said, her smile widening into something demonic. "He will vote exactly how I tell him to, or he goes to federal prison."