Chapter 6 - The Counter-Attack
By Saturday morning, Nathan was a cornered animal. And cornered animals do not plan strategic retreats; they lash out with everything they have left.
The front page of the *New York Post* featured a grainy still-frame from the Metropolitan Club: Nathan with his eyes wild, his tie crooked, and the headline screaming: **DIAMOND HEIST AT THE GALA: TYCOON ACCUSED OF ASSAULT AND THEFT.**
At 9:00 a.m., Nathan launched his desperate counter-offensive.
I was sitting in Julian’s office, drinking black coffee, when the alerts began flooding in. Nathan had retained Arthur Vance—Julian’s estranged, notoriously ruthless cousin—and issued an emergency press release to *Bloomberg* and *WWD*.
The statement claimed that I was suffering from severe psychiatric decompensation following the death of my grandfather. It alleged that I had illegally seized proprietary company designs, frozen corporate payroll accounts, and fabricated allegations of domestic violence to stage a hostile takeover of a publicly traded luxury brand.
To make matters worse, Nathan had physically barricaded himself inside the company’s corporate headquarters on the twenty-second floor of the Crown Building on Fifth Avenue. He had hired private security to lock down the executive suite, revoking my keycard access and ordering the IT department to wipe my corporate email accounts.
“He’s trying to stall until Monday’s market open,” Julian said, pacing in front of his whiteboard where the ownership structure of Beaumont & Hart was mapped out. “If he can confuse the public narrative enough to create an apparent ownership dispute, the state court might freeze all voting rights for six months while an independent referee is appointed. That gives him time to liquidate offshore assets and flee the country.”
“He won't make it to Monday,” I said, leaning back in my chair.
“Claire, he has armed private guards on the twenty-second floor,” Julian warned. “The building management won't intervene without a formal writ of execution, and the judge won't sign that until Monday morning.”
“Nathan made one critical mistake when he locked down that floor,” I said quietly, pulling my personal laptop onto my lap.
Julian paused, looking at me over his reading glasses. “What mistake?”
“He forgot who built the infrastructure.”
Nathan had always considered technological infrastructure beneath him. He didn't know how the server rooms were wired; he didn't know who maintained the high-security vaults; he didn't even know the master codes for the biometric safes that housed our raw gemstone inventory. He thought an executive was someone who sat behind a glass desk and barked orders at assistants.
For eleven years, every security protocol, every inventory tracking algorithm, and every encrypted cloud backup had been configured by a small, brilliant team of cybersecurity engineers I had hired from MIT.
I opened a command terminal on my screen.
“Every piece of jewelry over ten thousand dollars produced by Beaumont & Hart in the last seven years contains a microscopic RFID micro-transponder embedded directly into the hallmark stamp,” I explained, typing in a twenty-four-character alphanumeric password. “It’s how we track inventory across our twelve international boutiques. And it’s how our internal vault monitors weight displacement.”
I hit Enter.
A live schematic of the Crown Building’s twenty-second floor appeared on the screen. Inside the private safe of Nathan’s office, three red dots were blinking rapidly.
“What are those?” Julian asked, stepping closer to look over my shoulder.
“Those are the three matching emerald-cut stones from the Imperial Suite,” I said, my voice hardening. “Value: six million dollars. And look at the motion sensors.”
On the screen, Nathan’s private office door showed as active. The weight sensor on the floor safe dropped from fifty pounds to twelve.
“He’s packing them into a briefcase right now,” Julian whispered, his face tightening. “He’s stealing the inventory before the weekend is over.”
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“He thinks the private security he hired is working for him,” I said, closing the laptop with a sharp snap. “Call the NYPD Financial Crimes Division, Julian. Tell Detective Rossi that Nathan Hart isn't just in breach of a civil contract. He’s committing grand larceny in the first degree, in real time, caught on encrypted federal-standard surveillance.”
***
