Chapter 7 - The Boardroom Showdown
The elevator doors on the twenty-second floor of the Crown Building opened at precisely 11:30 a.m.
Nathan’s private security guards—two burly men in black tactical suits standing outside the double mahogany doors of the boardroom—immediately moved to block the hallway.
“Ma'am, this floor is private property,” the larger guard began, his hand hovering near his belt. “You need to turn around and—”
He stopped dead when he saw the four uniformed NYPD officers and two plainclothes detectives stepping out of the second elevator directly behind me. Detective Rossi, a weathered veteran with a gold shield pinned to his lapel, held up a signed search warrant and an arrest authorization.
“Step away from the doors, gentlemen,” Rossi said flatly. “Unless you want an obstruction charge added to your weekend.”
The guards looked at each other, raised their hands in surrender, and stepped aside without uttering another syllable.
Rossi pushed open the heavy double doors.
Inside, the boardroom looked like a war room in the final stages of defeat. Papers were scattered across the fifty-foot rosewood table. Half-empty bottles of scotch sat beside paper coffee cups. At the head of the table sat Nathan, his shirt untucked, his hair disheveled, and his eyes bloodshot. Beside him, trembling in a chair with her mascara smudged down her cheeks, was Vanessa Blake.
Between them on the table was an open leather travel duffel. Inside lay six velvet pouches of uncut diamonds, three passports, and stacks of banded hundred-dollar bills.
Nathan jumped to his feet, knocking his leather executive chair backward against the floor-to-ceiling glass wall.
“What is the meaning of this?!” Nathan bellowed, his voice cracking with hysteria. “Arthur! Call my attorney! Claire, you have no right to be here! This is a corporate headquarters! You’ve been terminated by executive order!”
“Nathan Hart,” Detective Rossi said, walking forward with a pair of steel handcuffs unclipped from his belt. “You are under arrest for grand larceny in the first degree, corporate embezzlement, and violation of an active order of protection.”
“Larceny?!” Nathan screamed, pointing a shaking finger at me. “Those are my stones! I’m the Chief Executive Officer of Beaumont & Hart! I built this company! She’s an employee! She’s just a bench jeweler!”
“You didn't build anything, Nathan,” I said, walking slowly down the length of the conference table, stopping just on the other side of the open duffel bag.
I looked at him with neither anger nor hatred. All of that had burned away over the last forty-eight hours, leaving behind only the cold, crystalline clarity of a diamond that had survived an impossible amount of pressure.
“You couldn't tell a synthetic cubic zirconia from an untreated River diamond without me holding your hand,” I said, my voice quiet and steady. “You never designed a single ring. You never negotiated a single mine contract. You were a billboard, Nathan. And billboards are easily replaced.”
Nathan lunged forward across the table, his face contorted in an animalistic snarl. “You ungrateful bitch! I made you! Nobody would have ever looked at your pathetic little Antwerp designs if I hadn't put you on Fifth Avenue! I’ll destroy you! I’ll burn this whole company to the ground before I let you have it!”
Before he could reach me, Detective Rossi and his partner grabbed Nathan by the wrists, slammed him chest-first against the polished rosewood table, and wrenched his arms behind his back.
The unmistakable, sharp *click* of the steel handcuffs locking around his wrists echoed through the room.
Vanessa burst into hysterical sobs, burying her face in her hands. “I didn't know! I swear to God, I didn't know he was stealing from the vault! He told me the company was his! He said she was just an ex-partner who was extorting him!”
“Save it for the grand jury, Ms. Blake,” Julian Vance said from the doorway, stepping forward with two process servers. “You’ve been formally named as a co-conspirator in an eight-million-dollar federal wire fraud indictment. Your accounts have been frozen as of ten minutes ago.”
Vanessa looked at Nathan as if he were a leper. The adoration, the smug superiority she had worn in the flagship store when she watched him slap me—all of it had transformed into pure, unadulterated venom.
“You ruined my life!” Vanessa shrieked at him, clawing at her own hair. “You said she was nothing! You said she had no power!”
Nathan didn't look at her. As the officers hauled him upright, his eyes remained locked on mine. He was panting, his forehead slick with sweat, the reality of his total destruction finally settling into his bones.
“Claire,” he wheezed, his voice breaking into a desperate whimper as they pulled him toward the door. “Claire, please... don't do this. Think of our family. Think of what people will say. You loved me. You loved me for eleven years!”
I picked up my grandfather’s original corporate charter from the table where Nathan had tossed it like trash.
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“I loved the man I thought you were, Nathan,” I said, without looking back at him. “It turns out, he was just a setting. And the stone was completely worthless.”
***
