Chapter 3 - The Broken Shredder
Annie didn't flinch under Daniel's intense gaze. She slipped off her pink backpack, unzipped it, and pulled out a handful of shredded paper strips.
"I like puzzles," Annie explained innocently, laying the shredded paper onto the dark mahogany desk. "My mom cleans the big trash cans. Yesterday, she brought home the paper from the big machine that cuts everything into strips. I taped the pieces back together while she was working."
Daniel watched in complete awe as the little girl arranged the shredded strips.
It was the original draft of the contract. The draft that explicitly contained the word "jointly."
"When I was waiting for my mom tonight," Annie continued, pointing at the blue folder, "I saw the new paper on your desk. I can read really fast. The word was gone. So I wanted to tell you."
Daniel’s blood turned to absolute ice.
Only three people had access to the physical drafts of the contract before they went into the shredder: Daniel, his Chief Financial Officer, Marcus, and his lead corporate attorney, Evelyn.
They were his two most trusted executives. They were the ones who had finalized the paperwork this afternoon while Daniel was in back-to-back meetings.
"They changed it," Daniel whispered, the sheer, evil magnitude of the betrayal setting into his bones.
Marcus and Evelyn hadn't made a typo. They had deliberately altered the final contract, planning to let Daniel sign it tomorrow morning. They were working with the merging company to stage a hostile takeover. They wanted to bankrupt Daniel, steal his company, and force him out of his own building.
"Mr. Carter," Laura trembled, gripping her daughter's shoulders. "Please, we will leave right now. We won't say a word."
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"No," Daniel said, standing up to his full, towering height. His expensive navy suit caught the city lights from the window. The terrifying, ruthless CEO fully awakened. "You aren't leaving. You are going to help me destroy them."
👉 What brilliant, calculated trap is Daniel about to set for his traitorous executives?
