It's an absolute withdrawal. No counter offers. No terms of renegotiation. "I don't care what the letter says. " Veronica barked, her composure finally fracturing. Call Nathaniel.
Call him on his personal cell. Tell him if he pulls this stunt Hale Industries will bury him in litigation until his grandchildren are gray. I will tie up Sentinel's assets so tightly he won't be able to buy a paperclip without my permission. Graham reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. His hands were shaking.
He pulled up an image and placed the screen over the termination letter. "I tried to call him. " Graham whispered. His legal counsel, Brooks, answered. Brooks told me I needed to review the security footage from the gala last night. He said the reason for the termination would be entirely self-evident.
Veronica frowned, leaning over the phone. It was a still frame from the ballroom security cameras. The time stamp read 9:42 p.m. The image quality was crisp, high definition. It showed a man in an off-the-rack tuxedo holding a small girl in a navy dress.
The man's head was snapped to the side. Standing directly in front of him with her arm raised in the unmistakable arc of a violent strike was Veronica. The air left Veronica's lungs. The silence in the penthouse became absolute, heavy, and suffocating. "That was him. " Graham said quietly.
The man you hit. The man whose child you threw out. That was Nathaniel. He doesn't go to society events. He hates press.
No one on the floor recognized him because he wasn't wearing a name tag. And he wasn't standing in the VIP section. Veronica stared at the grainy face of the man on the screen. She remembered the scuffed shoes. She remembered the cheap suit.
She remembered the way he had looked at her, not with fear or anger, but with the cold, assessing gaze of a building inspector finding a fatal structural flaw. This isn't an environment for children. He came to the gala, Graham continued, his voice hollow, to see the company he was selling his life's work to. He wanted to observe. He was trespassing, Veronica fired back, grasping blindly for a defense.
He bumped into me. His brat ruined a custom shoe. You assaulted the founder of Sentinel Grid in front of 400 witnesses, Graham corrected her, his tone hardening. The sycophant was gone. The pragmatist had taken over.
He owns 60% of the voting shares. He doesn't need his board's approval to kill this deal. He just did it. And the news is already leaking. Leaking?