Chapter 3: The Frozen Asset
Chapter 3: The Frozen Asset
By 8:00 a.m., I was lying in a private suite at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. The room didn't look like a hospital; it looked like a luxury hotel, courtesy of my father’s influence. Doctors had dressed the twenty deep welts across my back, given me painkillers, and stitched the small cuts on my hand.
My father sat in a chair beside my bed, a laptop open on his knees. The rhythmic clicking of his keyboard was the only sound in the room.
"You should rest, Daddy," I murmured, my voice still weak.
He looked up, the harshness in his eyes melting into pure warmth as he looked at me. "I am resting, sweetheart. Watching a parasite burn is very therapeutic."
He turned the laptop screen toward me. It showed a live ticker of the New York Stock Exchange. NexusCore’s stock symbol, NXCR, was in a vertical freefall. It looked like a red line cutting through a cliff side.
"How?" I whispered.
"Matthew forgot that while you built the deck for NexusCore, I bought forty percent of its foundational debt through shell companies five years ago," my father said calmly. "I did it to protect you, in case he ever failed. I called in the notes at 6:00 a.m. The banks are seizing his corporate assets as we speak."
Just then, Henderson stepped into the room, holding a tablet. "Mr. Sterling, Miss Clare. Matthew Hayes is downstairs. He tried to get to the penthouse, but the locks have been changed and his keycards are deactivated. He tracked the ambulance route here."
My father stood up, straightening his cuffs. "Show him up. But leave him in the corridor. I want him to see what he’s lost before he goes to jail."
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"No," I said, pushing myself up despite the tearing pain in my back. "Bring him in here. I want to look him in the eye."
My father hesitated, then nodded. "As you wish, Clare. You are the commander of this army now."
