Chapter 37: Payment Due
526 words
The gold nameplate—CEO: Julian Blackwood—was already gone. Two security guards, men Julian had ignored for a decade, gripped his elbows with bruising force, their fingers digging into the fine Italian wool of his suit.
"Get your hands off me!" Julian snarled, though his voice cracked, betraying the bile rising in his throat. "I built this tower! I am Blackwood Pharmaceutics!"
"Not anymore, sir," the head of security muttered, shoving him toward the spinning glass doors.
Julian stumbled out onto the sidewalk. The humidity hit him like a physical blow, instantly slicking his skin with sweat. Before he could regain his balance, the paparazzi swarmed—a chaotic sea of flashing bulbs and shouting mouths. They weren't cheering for him anymore. They were feeding.
He scrambled for his phone, his thumb trembling so violently he missed the icon twice. He opened his banking app, desperate to call a private driver, to escape to the airport, to anywhere.
FaceID Accepted.
Account Status: FROZEN due to Court Order #8990-B.
He swiped to his offshore accounts. FROZEN.
He checked his credit limit. REVOKED.
Rain began to fall, fat, heavy drops that mixed with the grime on the pavement. Julian stared at the screen until the pixels blurred. He had forty dollars in his wallet. That wouldn't even cover a cab to the Hamptons estate—which was currently being raided by federal marshals.
Miles above the gutter, the air was cool and scented with white tea. Sarah curled her toes into the plush cream carpet of the penthouse suite, the silence of the room wrapping around her like a protective blanket.
On the massive wall-mounted OLED screen, the headline flashed in urgent crimson: BLACKWOOD EMPIRE COLLAPSES. RECORD-BREAKING SEIZURE UNDERWAY.
The camera cut to a live feed of Julian’s mansion. Movers were hauling out his prized art collection. The Ferrari he loved more than his own son was being winched onto a flatbed truck.
Sarah took a slow sip of tea. It didn't taste like bitterness anymore. It tasted like oxygen.
Her phone buzzed on the marble coffee table. It wasn't Marcus. It was an unknown number.
She hesitated, setting her mug down with a soft clink. She swiped to answer but said nothing, pressing the device to her ear.
"...Sarah?"
The voice was unrecognizable at first—ragged, hyperventilating, stripped of all its polished cadence. Background noise roared behind him; wind, sirens, the distinct screech of a subway train.
"Sarah, please don't hang up," he choked out. "They took the cards. They changed the locks at the penthouse. I’m... I’m standing in the rain."
She walked to the floor-to-ceiling window, looking down at the ant-sized cars gridlocked thirty stories below.
"I need a loan," Julian wheezed, the desperation clawing through the speaker. "Just five thousand. To get a hotel. To hire a real lawyer for the appeal. We were family, Sarah. I’m the father of your child."
Sarah watched her reflection in the glass. She looked whole. She looked powerful.
"I'm sorry," she said, her voice cool and steady as a surgeon's scalpel. "I don't know who this is."
"Sarah, wait—!"
Click.
End of Chapter 37
