Chapter 17 - The Long Island Stronghold
The rain had turned into a thick, low-hanging fog by the time our private jet touched down at a quiet airbase near the Hamptons.
We weren't dressed in business attire. Ethan wore a black tactical vest over a dark sweater, carrying three encrypted satellite override drives. I wore a dark trench coat, holding the master keycodes to the Vance Global financial ledger—the ledger I had managed as Chairwoman for the past five years.
"If Julian releases those DNA files to the media," I said as our armored SUV sped through the misty pine roads, "Vance Global stock will plunge forty percent in morning trading. The board will trigger the emergency buyout clause."
"Julian doesn't want the stock to plunge," Ethan said, pulling a spare magazine from his belt and checking the slide of his sidearm. "He wants to force you to sign over your Chairwoman veto rights. Once you sign, Victoria’s hedge fund absorbs the trust, and Noah becomes legally stripped of his inheritance."
"I don't care about the inheritance, Ethan!" I snapped, tears threatening to break through my icy composure. "I care about my son! He thinks we lied to him! He thinks he doesn't belong to us!"
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"He is my son," Ethan said, his voice deep, rough, and absolute. "It doesn't matter what a lab test says. I raised him. I watched him take his first steps. I taught him how to throw a baseball. Blood didn't make him my boy—love did. And I will kill anyone who tries to take that from him."
The SUV slowed to a halt at the edge of a dense tree line overlooking the massive, gated perimeter of the Harrington mansion—a fortress-like estate surrounded by twelve-foot stone walls and armed private patrols.
