Her Father Let His New Wife Throw Her Out Of The Gala — Until Her Phone Screen Lit Up In The Black Towncar

Rain lashed against the armored windows of the black towncar as Marcus navigated the industrial labyrinth of the Brooklyn waterfront. Pier 42 stood like an iron skeleton against the stormy black sky, its rusted cranes towering over the churned gray water of the East River.

Claire sat in the rear seat, dressed in a sleek charcoal wool coat, her hair pinned back tightly. In her hand she held an untraceable titanium casing containing an emergency override drive that held the remaining master access keys to the Sterling Maritime software grid.

"You don't have to walk into this room, Claire," Marcus warned, his eyes checking the rearview mirror. "We have twenty private tactical contractors staged two blocks south. We can breach the facility and level the entire pier."

"If we breach with force, they burn that ledger," Claire said, staring out at the rain-slicked dock. "My mother left me a warning for a reason. Richard said Eleanor stole the software. I need to know if the woman I’ve been honoring was a visionary... or a thief."

Marcus pulled the towncar into the cavernous entrance of the rusted warehouse. Yellow halogen floodlights buzzed overhead, casting long, grotesque shadows across the oil-stained concrete.

In the center of the vast empty hangar, surrounded by a dozen armed men dressed in immaculate dark suits, sat an ornate Victorian iron dining table.

Tied to an iron chair beside the table was Richard. His face was swollen, blood trickled from a split lip down into his frayed collar, and his eyes were wild with absolute terror.

Sitting casually at the head of the table, sipping an amber liquid from a crystal tumbler, was a man in his early thirties with striking, cold gray eyes and an aristocratic posture that looked terrifyingly familiar.

He set his glass down on the iron table with a soft clink as Claire stepped out of the vehicle into the damp, echoing cold.