Chapter 3 - The Cold Threat
Elena pulled Mia tightly against her hip and stepped behind a towering marble column, out of the direct sightline of Harold’s security. She leaned down, kneeling to Mia’s eye level, keeping her voice to an absolute whisper.
“Baby, listen to Mommy,” Elena said, her voice shaking despite her best efforts to remain calm. “Did you really hear Daddy? Did you hear him through Uncle Harold?”
Mia nodded vigorously, wiping a tear from her cheek. “When Uncle Harold hugged me, his ear buzzed like a bee. Daddy’s voice came out of the little black dot. Daddy said... *‘Elena... cellar... Harold took the codes... please help me.’*”
Elena felt the ground dissolve beneath her feet.
Fourteen months. For fourteen months, she had wept into Mike’s old flannel shirts. For fourteen months, she had lived off food stamps and meager odd jobs while Harold sold off “redundant assets” from Vance-Sterling Technologies, slowly freezing her out of Mike’s estate. Harold had constantly played the savior, dropping by her rundown apartment with groceries, whispering that Mike was reckless, that Mike had abandoned them, subtly suggesting Elena should just give up her remaining rights to the company and let him “protect” them.
He hadn’t buried her husband. He had locked him in a cage.
“Elena.”
The voice was directly behind her.
Elena whirled around. Harold was standing barely two feet away. His bodyguards, two hulking men in charcoal suits with earpieces, blocked the corridor leading to the main exit. Harold’s eyes were no longer warm. They were dead, calculating, and filled with venomous malice.
“You’re making a scene, Elena,” Harold said, his voice flat and menacingly low. “A very ugly scene.”
“We’re leaving, Harold,” Elena said, clutching Mia to her chest, her chin raised. “Step aside.”
“I’m afraid you can’t do that,” Harold murmured, taking a deliberate step closer, crowding her against the cold marble pillar. He leaned in until Elena could smell the bourbon on his breath. “Mia is hallucinating. You’ve poisoned her mind with your grief, haven’t you? You’re an unfit mother, Elena. Depressed. Paranoid. Living in squalor.”
“I know what’s behind your ear, Harold,” Elena whispered, looking straight into his pupils.
Harold didn’t blink. Instead, a grotesque, sneering smirk touched the corner of his mouth. “Even if you do, who will believe a penniless, broken widow over a billionaire philanthropist? You say one word to anyone in this room, Elena, and I will have Child Protective Services remove Mia from your custody before breakfast tomorrow. I have judges in my pocket. I have the police chief at table four. You will die in an asylum, and your daughter will grow up in foster care.”
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👉 Harold leaned back, fixing his cufflinks with terrifying composure, completely unaware that Elena’s free hand was already slipped inside her oversized black coat.
***
