Chapter 11 - The Corner Office
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For the next thirty days, I became exactly what the city of San Diego expected me not to be.
Hyper-competent. Ruthless. Unstoppable.
At first, the gossip columns had a field day. They spun it as a tragic mental breakdown. The Whitmore heiress cancels high-society wedding! Beloved head maid arrested for grand larceny! Adopted brother suspended from CEO duties! Julian Kingsley’s family on the brink of financial ruin!
High society loved a fragile, broken rich woman. They wanted me in a sanitarium. They were entirely unprepared for a woman who woke up choosing violence.
I moved my base of operations from the Montecito mansion to our towering corporate headquarters in downtown San Diego. I bypassed the executive suites and took the top-floor corner office—the massive, glass-walled sanctum my father had occupied before his death. For years, Preston had sat behind that imposing oak desk, holding court whenever Blair was too intimidated by the business world to show up. He had cultivated the board, letting investors believe he was the rightful heir.
On my very first morning, I walked in, picked up Preston’s brass nameplate, dropped it into the trash can, and placed my own on the desk.
Then, the bloodletting began.
I brought in a swarm of outside muscle. Cutthroat corporate counsel from Washington, D.C., forensic accountants from New York, and a brutal crisis communications team from Los Angeles.
Every single executive who had pledged loyalty to Preston was subjected to a terrifying, microscopic audit. Every logistics contract Julian’s shipping company touched was ripped up and heavily reviewed. Every dummy corporation and offshore shell company connected to Martha, Phoebe, or the Hale brothers was frozen and flagged for the feds.
The board of directors called an emergency meeting. They expected a crying, overwhelmed girl asking for help.
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I brought three binders of evidence.
As I walked into the boardroom, twelve powerful directors sat around the black glass table, trying very hard to pretend they weren't terrified of the twenty-four-year-old woman at the head of it.
