The hum of the phone line felt like a live wire pressed against my ear. My pulse hammered against my ribs, a frantic rhythm matching the frantic splashing of cold water I had thrown on my face just minutes before.

In a single fluid motion, Daniel reached out, grabbed Detective Vance by the lapel of his suit jacket, and slammed him back against the heavy oak door with a force that rattled the brass hinges.

The detective gasped, his eyes bulging as Daniel’s fist hovered inches from his jaw.

“Daniel! Have you lost your mind?” Senator Sterling shrieked, stumbling back. “That’s a sworn officer of the law!”

“That’s a corrupt municipal rent-a-cop who accepted a bribe from Amanda’s legal team to forge a fraudulent warrant,” Daniel snarled, his voice vibrating with a rage so terrifying that even the private security guards hesitated to step forward. He stared down at the trembling detective. “You have exactly ten seconds to hand me the physical copy of that warrant before I have my corporate counsel strip your pension, revoke your badge, and sue you into bankruptcy. One... two...”

“Here! Take it!” the detective choked out, pulling a folded paper from his jacket pocket and thrusting it toward Daniel.

Daniel snatched the paper, glanced at the signature block, and crumpled it into a tight ball in his fist. He shoved the detective aside like a discarded rag doll and turned his blazing blue eyes onto Senator Sterling.

“You listen to me very carefully, Thomas,” Daniel said, his voice dropping to a low, lethal hum that commanded the entire room. “You and your daughter thought you could set a trap for a woman you underestimated. You thought you could use my children as collateral damage in your political chess game.”

“Daniel, you’re throwing away a billion-dollar political alliance!” Sterling stammered, his face turning the color of a bruised plum. “The wedding is in forty-eight hours!”

“There is no wedding,” Daniel replied calmly.

The room seemed to stop rotating.

Senator Sterling froze. “What did you just say?”

“I said the wedding is canceled,” Daniel repeated, pulling his cell phone from his pocket with his free hand. He hit speed dial, pressing the speaker button so the entire room could hear. “Vance? This is Daniel. Cancel the press embargo. Issue an immediate public statement from Harden Tech: the wedding between Daniel Harden and Amanda Sterling is officially terminated due to irreconcilable conflicts of interest.”

“Mr. Harden, are you out of your mind?!” the voice of his chief public relations director shrieked over the speaker. “The Senator will destroy us in Congress! The infrastructure bill!”

“Let him try,” Daniel snapped. “Let him try to pass a bill without a single line of code from Harden Tech powering his entire state grid. Disconnect their access codes immediately. Get security in the lobby to escort Senator Sterling and his associates off my property.”

“You’ll regret this, Harden!” Senator Sterling screamed, his face purple with absolute fury as two burly private security guards materialized in the doorway, grabbing him by the arms. “You’ll be ruined! You’ll never work in this state again!”