Chapter 4 - Whispers in the Executive Boardroom
Within forty-eight hours, Tessa realized that Costa Enterprises was a battlefield dressed in silk ties.
At 2:00 p.m. on Thursday, the quarterly executive council convened.
These were not mere corporate directors; they were the heads of old-money families and underbosses who controlled shipping docks, real estate monopolies, and transit unions.
Tessa sat at the corner of the boardroom table, recording minutes on an encrypted tablet.
At the far end sat Victor Moretti, a silver-haired syndicate boss with cruel, hooded eyes.
“Gabriel,” Moretti sneered, tapping an unlit cigar against the mahogany table. “We hear you’ve taken a stray off the street. Putting a night-clerk girl outside your personal vault? You’re getting soft in your old age.”
The room went completely still.
Five bodyguards shifted their weight behind the chairs.
Tessa felt every eye turn toward her.
Her skin prickled with heat, but she remembered what Gabriel had said.
She did not look down.
She kept her back straight and her fingers poised above the screen.
Gabriel did not raise his voice.
He slowly set down his fountain pen.
The metallic click echoed through the silent boardroom.
“Victor,” Gabriel said, his tone conversational yet dripping with lethal venom. “If you speak about Miss Lynn again, I will cut out your tongue and mail it to your wife in Milan.”
Moretti’s face paled.
He opened his mouth to protest, but the pure, unadulterated menace radiating from Gabriel choked the words in his throat.
“This meeting is adjourned,” Gabriel commanded. “Get out.”
The men scrambled out of the room like scolded dogs.
When the heavy doors clicked shut, Tessa exhaled a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.
Gabriel walked to where she sat.
“You handled that well,” he said quietly.
May you like
“They hate me,” she said honestly.
“They fear what they do not control,” Gabriel replied, reaching out and gently brushing a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “And they will never control you.”
