Chapter 7 - Chloe’s Desperation
Three minutes later, Julian was escorted into the primary study by two towering private security officers.
The transformation from the slick, untouchable CEO of yesterday was sickeningly complete. Julian’s tuxedo was rumpled, stained with dirt and morning grease from the city streets. His face was gray, his hair matted to his forehead with sweat, his eyes sunken and bloodshot. He looked like a man who had spent the night wandering through a circle of hell.
He saw me standing behind the wide desk.
“Clara,” he croaked, dropping his hands to his sides in a gesture of absolute surrender. “Clara... please. Just listen to me for one minute. Just one.”
“You have sixty seconds, Julian,” I said, my voice completely devoid of human warmth.
Julian stepped forward, his boots squeaking against the hardwood floor. The security guards closed the distance, but I raised one hand, signaling them to hold.
“I left her,” Julian stammered, tears welling in his red-rimmed eyes. “I left Chloe on the street corner at four in the morning. I told her I never want to see her face again! She was a parasite, Clara! She latched onto me when I was vulnerable, she made me think you didn't respect me, she manipulated the offshore transfers!”
He dropped to his knees once more, folding his hands together in prayer.
“I love you. I swear on the soul of my mother, I love you! If you take everything—if you strip the stock, if you take the penthouse, if you make me work as a junior analyst in an overseas branch—I will do it! Just don't send me to federal prison! Don't destroy my life! We were married last night, Clara! In the eyes of God, you are my wife!”
I looked down at him, feeling an overwhelming, almost suffocating disgust.
“In the eyes of God, Julian, you are a monster who gambled with human lives for milestone bonuses.”
Julian’s face froze. The pathetic tears stopped flowing instantly.
“What... what did you say?” he whispered.
I reached out, picked up the printout of the two-year-old clinical trial memo, and dropped it onto the floor right in front of his knees.
Julian looked down at the paper. When his eyes recognized the subject line and his own typed reply, the final shred of blood vanished from his face. His skin turned a sickly, translucent grey.
“You... you found the archived Bio-Apex servers,” he breathed, his voice barely audible.
“You killed my father, Julian,” I said, each word landing like an anvil. “You knew the immunotherapy delivery mechanism would trigger cardiac collapse, and you ordered them to proceed anyway because you needed Horizon’s Q4 capital tranche to maintain your illusion of success.”
Julian began to shake violently. He reached out to push the paper away, as if touching it would burn his skin.
“No... no, Clara, that wasn't... it was a calculated clinical risk! The scientists were being overly conservative! I was trying to save him! I swear to God I thought it would cure him!”
“You are a liar,” I said, stepping closer to him, looking down into his terrified, hollow eyes. “You are an arrogant, hollow coward who climbed on the shoulders of giants and convinced himself he could fly. You thought you could take his company, take his daughter, take his fortune, and bury the truth beneath a multimillion-dollar wedding.”
Before Julian could answer, Arthur’s cell phone rang sharply. Arthur answered, listened for ten seconds, and then looked over at me with a grim, sardonic smile.
“Put it on speaker, Arthur,” I ordered.
Arthur tapped the screen. A woman’s breathless, frantic voice filled the study:
*“Hello?! Arthur Vance?! Is this Clara? Please, God, tell me Clara is listening!”*
It was Chloe Laurent.
Julian’s eyes widened in horror. “Chloe? What the hell are you doing?!”
*“Julian? You piece of garbage, are you there?!”* Chloe screamed through the phone, her voice cracking with hysterics. *“Clara, listen to me! I am at the federal courthouse right now! I am sitting with the Assistant United States Attorney! Julian keeps a private safety deposit box at the City National Bank on Santa Monica Boulevard! Box number 882! It has the secondary ledger, the burner phones, and the cold-storage cryptocurrency wallets with eight million dollars in untraceable funds!”*
“CHLOE, SHUT UP!” Julian roared, lunging toward the phone, but the two security guards seized him by the arms, slamming him down against the desk with bone-jarring force. “YOU BITCH! I GAVE YOU EVERYTHING!”
*“I’m signing a proffer agreement, Julian!”* Chloe sobbed, laughing through her tears. *“They offered me full immunity if I deliver your private records! You left me on the curb like a dog, you coward! You told me Clara was an idiot who would never find out! Well, she found out, and I'm not going to prison for your vanity!”*
Arthur tapped the screen, cutting the connection.
Julian hung limp in the grip of the security guards, his face pressed against the cold slate of the desk, his eyes wide and completely unblinking.
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The mistress he had chosen over his bride had just delivered the final nail into his coffin.
***
