Chapter238 Leaving in the Dead of Night
"This is impossible!" Mrs. Martinez screamed, every trace of her polished composure gone. "Martinez is one of your top-tier members! You've made a mistake! She's the one who should be thrown out, not me!"
The Chamber President didn't even glance at her. His voice stayed level and businesslike.
"All membership fees paid by Martinez over the years will be refunded in full within three business days. Your membership status has been permanently removed from our system, effective immediately."
The words hit Mrs. Martinez like a bucket of ice water.
The Martinez family had just shifted their business operations back to the country. Their footing here was still shaky. This chamber had been their most important foothold, their best shot at landing serious partnerships.
Without the chamber's backing and network, Martinez had almost no chance of breaking into the major deals they needed.
"Please, you can't do this..." She tried to say more, tried to fight for a way out.
But two bodyguards were already moving, one on each side of her. They took her by the arms and dragged her toward the exit, indifferent to her struggling.
The humiliation she had spent the entire evening trying to arrange for Miranda had found its way back to her in the worst possible way.
The commotion settled quickly after she was gone.
The Chamber President turned to look at the Vice President, his expression still calm.
"Your term ends early," he said simply. "Go back and sign your resignation paperwork."
What he kept to himself was a deep, private satisfaction. That stubborn old man was finally out the door.
Technically the Vice President had two years left in his term. But he had made the mistake of going after the wrong person.
The Chamber President had been fed up with him for a long time. The man was a relic who had spent years nodding along in public and quietly undermining orders behind closed doors, costing the chamber some of the best talent they could have had. His bias against women in business was the worst of it. He believed women belonged at home, not competing with men, and that attitude had driven away several brilliant women the Chamber President had worked hard to recruit.
Now the old man was gone, and things could finally change.
The evening, meant to be a gathering of the city's finest, wrapped up abruptly with the Vice President collapsing from the stress of it all.
In the shuffle, a few people who had no obvious connection to one another quietly exchanged information and slipped away.
Up on the floor above, hidden in the shadows, a team member's voice came through the specialized comm unit, barely containing his excitement.
"Captain, we did it. The tracker's on him."
Clifton's eyes stayed fixed on the crowd below. His voice gave nothing away.
"Don't celebrate yet. This guy has slipped past us more times than I can count. His counter-surveillance skills are better than yours. Stay sharp."
"Yes, sir." The excitement vanished from the team member's voice, replaced by focus.
The chamber ended early, but Miranda was pulled aside by Governor Ava, who extended a warm invitation. Several other executives from companies working on clean energy technology were invited as well.
The group settled into a deep conversation about the future of the new energy sector and the real technological barriers ahead. They talked until well into the night.
By the time Miranda returned to the Prescott estate, it was past midnight.
Talking with people at the very top of your field had a way of showing you exactly where your own gaps were.
Miranda sank into the armchair in her room, her head heavy and full.
But it was a good kind of full.
She only let herself rest for a few minutes before she pushed herself up, opened her laptop, and typed out every new idea and angle the conversation had sparked. She didn't stop until she had captured all of it.
Only then did the exhaustion finally catch up with her. She got up and went to wash off her makeup before bed.
She had no idea that while she slept, Mrs. Martinez had already passed information about her marriage into the Prescott family to Dominic.
In the study of the Lancaster residence, Dominic stared at the contents of an email on his screen. His expression shifted between pale and flushed, cycling through emotions he couldn't quite control.
The email contained photos of Miranda and Clifton arriving at the Pullman estate together, along with detailed information about her marriage into the Prescott family.
He hadn't known. Not a word. His own daughter had gone and married the Prescott heir without breathing a single word to him.
No wonder she had turned her nose up at every match he had carefully arranged for her.
She had been aiming straight for the top.
"Bang." Dominic shut the laptop hard, shoved back his chair, and walked out. He went straight to Miranda's old room and pushed the door open with enough force to rattle the wall.
The sound jolted Arabella out of a deep sleep.
Before she could say anything, Dominic cut her off. His voice came out low and tight, like he was forcing each word through clenched teeth.
"Miranda and the Prescott heir. Did you and Christian know about this?"
Arabella had been half-asleep a moment ago. She wasn't anymore.
She hadn't expected this to come out so soon.
Decades of marriage meant Dominic could read her in an instant. The brief stillness on her face told him everything.
"Unbelievable," he said.
He let out a short, furious laugh, then drove his foot into the door with a heavy crash.
"Miranda gets married and the two of you keep it from me. Her own father. I'm standing here like a fool who doesn't know anything about his own family."
Arabella looked at her husband's face, twisted with rage, and felt a deep, bone-tired exhaustion settle over her. She pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose and answered him plainly.
"Where were you when Miranda went through her divorce? When she was kidnapped? When she lost the baby and was lying in a hospital bed? You didn't comfort her. You took the other side and blamed her. And just a few days ago you slapped her in the street over your own pride."
"Before you ask what kind of daughter she is, maybe ask what kind of father you've been."
That was why she had never told him.
Dominic had no answer. But admitting that only made the anger worse.
"That's still no reason to hide it from me!" he snapped. "I'll be watching. A marriage I didn't approve of, didn't support? Let's see just how happy she ends up."
He turned and stormed out, slamming the door behind him.
Arabella sat in the dark for a long moment, waiting for her breathing to steady.
She had started losing faith in Dominic when Miranda went through the divorce. The day she watched him raise his hand against their daughter, something else in her had gone quiet for good.
But Miranda had fought hard to get to where she was now. She had finally moved past the pain of her first marriage. Dominic could not be allowed to wreck this.
Arabella dressed quickly, grabbed her keys, and went after him.
She drove out toward the edge of the city, heading for an old villa that had belonged to their family for years. It was full of memories. She knew that when Dominic was in a dark mood, he liked to go there alone.
The whole drive, she turned over the same question in her mind: how to convince him to let Miranda live her own life.
But as she pulled up close to the villa, the front door was slightly ajar. And from somewhere inside, drifting out on the night air, came sounds that stopped her cold.
Soft. Unmistakable. The kind that needed no explanation.