Chapter 254 Monica’s Performance
Chapter 254 Monica’s Performance
Chapter Two Hundred And Fifty-One
“Director Nathan, what’s the meaning of this?!”
“Are you for real?! You’re nothing short of a murderer!”
The directors raged, and waited for Nathan to say something.
Twelve board members. The chairman. The senior staff along the wall. Zach at the secondary table with his case. The two men who had come in with him positioned at the door.
And Lucian, at the head of the table, looking at Nathan with the complete, unhurried attention of someone who had been looking at this moment from a long way off and had now arrived at it.
Nathan stood.
He did not plan to stand.
He stood because the alternative was to remain seated under the weight of the room’s attention in a way that felt unbearable, and standing was a form of agency even when it was not accompanied by anything else.
“This,” he said, pointing at Zach and his case with a shaky hand, “Is fabricated.”
His voice was not as steady as he wanted it to be.
“Every piece of this is fabricated,” he said, with more force this time, reaching for the volume that had always served him in confrontations. “This is a manufactured case, assembled by people who have wanted me out of this Empire for years, and I will not sit here and—”
“Oh please, Dorecror Evans. The payment records are confirmed by three independent financial forensic analysts,” Zach said, without looking up from the case. “The phone records are confirmed by the service provider. The doctor’s confession was provided voluntarily and has been reviewed by the prosecuting counsel.”
“I don’t care what you’ve reviewed,” Nathan said. His voice had the quality now of something that had moved past control without his permission. “I don’t care what you think you have. None of this is accurate, none of it reflects anything I have done, and I want to know who authorised this witch hunt in my own Empire—”
“Your Empire?” Aria scoffed, “You’re so delusional!”
She glared at him, “You’re nothing but a bastard who attempted murder on his own brother! How dare you try to claim the empire?! Sit your ass down, Nathan!”
“I will not sit down!” Nathan thundered. “I will not sit down and listen to my name being slandered in front of the board of this company, the company that I have served for years , the company whose interests I have protected while certain other people—” He stopped.
He was breathing harder than he wanted to be. He could feel it.
He thought about the vehicle on the route.
He thought about the evening.
He thought about whether the plan was already in motion or whether it could still—
He thought about the two men at the door.
He looked at them now, and realized that they were not decorative.
He understood this with the specific clarity that arrived when adrenaline had cleared away the remaining ambiguity.
“You have nothing,” he said through gritted teeth, but the statement had lost its force somewhere in the last thirty seconds and what came out was the residue of it rather than the thing itself.
The door opened again, at that moment, and everyone turned to look at it.
Monica came through it to their astonishment, more especially Nathan.
He had not known she was in the building. He had not arranged for her to be here. The sight of her walking through the door with the specific expression of a woman who had been in a waiting room for several hours and had run out of patience for waiting told him that she had come on her own, which was either a very good decision or a very bad one and he could not yet tell which.
She looked at the room.
She took in the case and the documents and the recording device and the two men at the door and Zach and Lucian and the board members.
She looked at Nathan, then at Aria, her face hardening.
Aria was sitting beside Lucian with a smug smile, the specific expression of a woman who had been waiting for this day with the specific patience of someone who had built toward it carefully and was now watching it conclude.
Monica’s expression changed.
She turned to the room.
“This is an attack,” she said.
Her voice was strong and clear and she delivered it with the confidence of a woman who had decided on her strategy in the corridor and was implementing it. “This entire presentation is an orchestrated attack on my husband by people who have already taken everything and are not satisfied.” She looked at the board members with the specific appeal of someone reaching for sympathy in an institutional setting. “My husband has given all of his life to this family. Years of loyalty and service and dedication, and this is what he receives?! Bullshit!”
She moved to stand beside Nathan.
“Lucian has the chairmanship,” she said. “He has the family’s support. He has his wife beside him.” She gestured at Aria with the specific movement of someone who wanted the gesture to communicate something without having to state it directly. “They have everything. They have everything and they are still standing here trying to take my husband’s reputation as well, because that is apparently not enough for them.”
Her voice had acquired a tremor.
Nathan watched her produce the tremor with the professional appreciation of someone who understood what she was doing and recognised that she was doing it well.
She looked at the board members.
“My husband is not a perfect man,” she said, with the specific humility of someone offering a strategic concession. “No one in this room is a perfect man or woman. But the suggestion that he would have done what is being alleged—” She stopped. The tremor intensified. “I was with him during those three years. I watched this family suffer. I watched the chairman suffer. I watched this Empire suffer. And now you are telling me that my husband caused that?” Her voice broke on the last word with the specific precision of someone who has practiced a break. “How can you believe that? How can any of you sit here and believe that?!”
She was weeping now.
Not dramatically. The specific quiet weeping of someone who wanted to be seen doing it rather than heard.
She reached for Nathan’s hand.
He gave it to her.
Around the table, the board members were doing the thing that board members did when they were receiving competing information from compelling sources, which was the particular uncomfortable stillness of institutional people who were responsible for a conclusion and were not yet certain what it was.
Nathan felt the room shift then, and he waited with baited breath.