He Shoved Cake in My Face. I Destroyed His Empire! novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Thirty-Eight Percent

A transfer with her forged signature hands her voting shares to Colette, and the elevator at DePeyster Harbor stalls and freezes.

I cleaned the burn in the bathroom and covered it with gauze from the cabinet.

When I came back out, all three of them were still in my apartment.

"This is my home," I said. "You're the ones who need to leave."

Tobias's face changed.

"I'm the man you're marrying on Saturday."

"Not for much longer."

For one raw moment, panic broke through his composure.

Then Dominic glanced at him, and Tobias's pride snapped back into place.

"Fine." He picked up his jacket. "You get one night. Come to the office tomorrow and we'll clean up the damage from the party."

At the door he turned back.

"You love me, Allegra. Don't make a decision you'll regret."

Colette walked out between the two of them.

I stood in the hall and watched until the elevator took them down.

I went back inside and called the night desk.

"Nobody gets up to my floor tonight," I said. "Not Mr. DePeyster, not Miss Prewitt, not anyone who says I invited them."

"Understood, Ms. Bellandi."

"Have the locksmith here by seven."

Then I turned the deadbolt and put a chair under the handle.

I had believed Tobias was different from Dominic.

I had been wrong about that, and I hadn't known how wrong until tonight.

My phone buzzed on the island, next to the ruined platter.

It was an email from my cousin Stefano, who ran our family's office in New York.

Subject: Call me. DePeyster Harbor voting shares.

I opened the attachment and read it standing up.

My thirty-eight percent voting interest in DePeyster Harbor Group had been transferred to Colette Prewitt two days ago.

The authorization page carried my signature.

I had never seen the document in my life.

I read it again.

Colette had sat across from me at brunch on Tuesday and asked whether I was nervous about the wedding.

She had held my hand.

And on Wednesday, somebody in Dominic's office had filed the transfer.

I called Stefano.

He answered on the first ring, and he didn't say hello.

"I've been trying to reach you for three hours. Where are you?"

"Home. Is the signature good enough to hold?"

"For a bank, yes. It's your name and our seal." He took a breath. "Allegra, did you sign anything for them?"

"No."

"Then somebody did it for you."

I looked at the platter on my counter, at the lobster lying in its ice.

"I'm going to DePeyster Harbor in the morning," I said. "I want my shares back before they open the doors."

"Let me come with you."

"No. I want to see their faces when I ask."

I slept in the guest room, with the injector on the nightstand and the closet door shut.

The next morning I wore a black suit and my grandmother's watch.

The burn pulled every time I breathed.

The DePeyster Harbor tower stood on the water in Midtown, forty floors of glass with the company's name across the lobby.

I had walked into it a hundred times as Tobias's fiancée.

This morning nobody at the front desk looked up.

I took the private elevator that went straight to the executive floor.

The doors closed, and the car rose for about ten floors.

Then it dropped.

My stomach lurched.

The lights went out, and the car shuddered to a stop between floors.

"Hello?"

Nobody answered.

I pressed the emergency button, and then I pressed it again.

My phone showed no signal.

A moment later, the vents above me began to roar.

Freezing air poured down into the dark.

I pushed every button on the panel.

None of them lit.

I wrapped my arms around myself, and the burn along my waist throbbed with every shiver.

Time went on.

My teeth were chattering, and my vision had started to blur at the edges.

I sank down against the wall.

Then the doors slid open.

Tobias, Dominic and Colette stood outside, looking in.

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