Chapter 5 - The Wrath of Arthur Cole
Arthur Cole didn't bother knocking. He shoved Chloe’s office door open so hard it banged against the drywall, startling Sarah into dropping her pen.
Arthur was a large man, heavy-set and dripping with expensive cologne and misplaced entitlement. He pointed a thick, manicured finger directly at Chloe’s chest.
"You!" Arthur bellowed, his voice booming across the open-plan floor and drawing the silent, horrified attention of every accountant and auditor in the vicinity. "You little arrogant piece of work! You think you can walk into a local establishment, harass my niece, and ruin my family's business?!"
Chloe didn't flinch. She slowly stood up behind her desk, folding her arms across her chest. She was five-foot-six, but at that moment, she projected the unshakeable presence of a woman standing ten feet tall.
"Lower your voice, Arthur," Chloe said, her tone icy and deadpan. "You're in a professional office, not a fish market."
"Don't you dare talk down to me!" Arthur snarled, taking two aggressive steps into the room. "My niece called me in tears this morning because you threatened her job over some old bag dropping a jar of truffles! And now—coincidentally—our municipal contracts are frozen! Did you pull some kind of dirty trick with your audit files? Did you sabotage us?!"
Sarah gasped, shrinking back toward the corner.
Chloe looked at Arthur with profound, unadulterated pity. It was the exact same look she had given Marissa the day before.
"Arthur, if your company's contracts are frozen, it's not because of a grocery store dispute," Chloe said smoothly, stepping around her desk so there was nothing between them. "It's because your financial statements are riddled with more holes than Swiss cheese. I've been auditing your offshore wire transfers all morning. You've been funneling municipal development funds into private shell companies for years. You didn't need my help to ruin Vance Global; you did that all by yourself."
Arthur’s face turned from purple to an alarming shade of grey. For a fraction of a second, the bluster drained out of him, replaced by cold, naked panic.
"You... you lying bitch," he hissed, lunging forward with his hand raised as if to swat the folder off the desk. "I'll have you fired before lunch! I'll make sure you never work in this city again!"
Before Arthur’s hand could even come down, the air in the hallway outside the office seemed to drop ten degrees.
A heavy, absolute silence fell over the entire floor. The whispers of the surrounding accountants died instantly.
Heavy, measured footsteps echoed against the polished marble floor.
Dante Rostov walked past the row of glass offices, flanked by two towering men in identical charcoal suits who looked like they had been carved out of granite. Dante didn't look at Sarah, he didn't look at the trembling auditors, and he didn't look at Arthur.
May you like
His dark, unblinking gaze was fixed entirely on the open door of Chloe’s office.
Arthur, sensing the sudden shift in the room's atmosphere, turned around—and froze mid-breath.
