Chapter 22 - The Echo of the Ballroom
Juliet Kensington arrived at our office precisely at ten o'clock. Daniel personally escorted her through our private, secure elevator in the underground parking garage to completely avoid the main lobby. Juliet was a strikingly beautiful woman in her early twenties, but she was entirely consumed by a nervous, frantic energy. She wore a high-necked designer silk blouse, despite the warm summer weather, and she clutched a luxury handbag against her chest like it was a shield keeping her tethered to the earth.
I stood up and walked around my desk, offering a warm, unassuming smile. "Juliet, my name is Nora. Please, sit down. You are completely safe here. The windows are soundproof, the networks are encrypted, and no one in your family knows you are in this building."
She sank into the plush armchair, her hands trembling violently. "You don't know my father," she whispered, her voice barely audible, darting her eyes toward the door. "He is everywhere. He has microphones in the house. He has private investigators on his payroll. If he finds out I came here, he will ruin me."
"He won't," Daniel interrupted smoothly, handing Juliet a cup of warm chamomile tea. "Our security team jammed the signal on your phone the moment you stepped into our transport vehicle. As far as your father's servers are concerned, your phone is currently sitting in the waiting room of your therapist's office. You are invisible to them."
Juliet took a shaky breath, wrapping her hands around the warm mug. "He has taken everything from me. Before I turned eighteen, my grandmother left me a massive trust fund. My father convinced me to sign a power of attorney for a 'business venture.' Now, I don't even have a debit card. If I want to buy a coffee, I have to submit a request through his executive assistant. He told me that if I ever try to leave, he will frame me for embezzlement and destroy my life."
I leaned against the edge of my desk, looking directly into her eyes, feeling the echo of my own past. "Juliet, I understand exactly what you are feeling. I know the absolute terror of realizing that the people who are supposed to love you are actually treating you like a hostile acquisition. They use money to make you feel helpless, to convince you that survival without them is impossible."
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"Is it?" she asked, a tear slipping down her pale cheek. "Is it possible to beat them?"
"Your father built a financial cage," I said, my voice hardening into pure steel. "But every cage has a lock, and every lock has a key. I am an expert at breaking locks. We are going to find your money, we are going to freeze his assets, and we are going to give you your life back."
