Chapter 5 5

Hazel walked into the dimly lit, wood-paneled study.

She pushed the heavy door shut and turned the brass lock. The heavy click severed her from the rest of the house.

She walked over to the massive mahogany desk. She picked up her phone and opened Chandler's contact file.

Her thumbs moved quickly, typing out a message checking on the progress of his morning tasks. The grammar was flawlessly polite, yet the underlying syntax carried the unmistakable weight of a threat.

She hit send.

Hazel tossed the phone onto the leather desk pad. She pulled a thick stack of the Powers Corporation's internal financial reports toward her and began to read.

Miles away, inside the glass-walled conference room at the Manhattan headquarters, Chandler sat at the head of the table.

A senior executive was sweating through a presentation on quarterly projections.

Chandler's phone buzzed on the glass table.

He glanced down at the screen. His pupils contracted sharply.

He opened the text message. The calm, authoritative tone of the words made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. A cold bead of sweat rolled down his spine.

The executive noticed Chandler's sudden rigidity. He stopped talking. "Is there a problem, Mr. Rhodes?"

Chandler quickly locked his phone. He forced his facial muscles to relax.

"Keep going," Chandler snapped coldly. But beneath the table, his heart was hammering against his ribs.

At that exact moment, Chelsea was tearing down the streets of Manhattan in her matte black G-Wagon.

She gripped the steering wheel so hard her knuckles were white. She tapped her Bluetooth earpiece, calling K. Brown, Caryn's crisis PR manager.

The line connected. K. Brown immediately launched into a slick, corporate greeting.

Chelsea cut him off.

"Listen to me, you bottom-feeding rat," she snarled, her voice dripping with venom. "You tell me where she is, or I will personally make sure every PR firm in this city blacklists your name by noon."

She slammed on the brakes at a red light, the tires screeching violently.

"Do not treat the Powers family like fools," she warned, her voice dropping to a deadly whisper.

On the other end of the line, K. Brown swallowed hard. The sudden, vicious aggression from the usually air-headed socialite completely shattered his confidence.

He panicked. In a trembling voice, he gave up Caryn's secret address in SoHo.

Chelsea didn't even say goodbye. She ended the call and slammed her foot onto the gas pedal, running the red light.

Back in the study, Hazel's eyes moved across the financial spreadsheets at an inhuman speed.

Her brow furrowed slightly. She spotted it. A massive, cleverly hidden flaw in the debt structuring.

She picked up a heavy fountain pen. She began writing rapidly on a blank sheet of paper, drafting a series of complex financial deduction formulas.

At headquarters, Chandler walked out of the conference room and into his private office.

He stood by the floor-to-ceiling window, looking out over the steel skyline. His mind kept flashing back to Hazel's cold, dead eyes in the aircraft.

He realized the terrifying truth. The woman everyone thought was a liability was quietly seizing the throat of the entire family.

Chandler took a deep breath. He picked up his desk phone and dialed the head of security.

"I need live feeds from the townhouse," Chandler ordered.

"Sir," the security chief replied, his voice trembling with confusion and a hint of fear. "The network at the residence is completely dark. Ten minutes ago, the head butler used the patriarch's absolute emergency protocol to manually sever the external feed. He stated he was acting under Mrs. Powers' direct orders for an 'immediate internal security audit.' We are locked out."

Chandler's grip on the phone tightened until his knuckles ached, the plastic groaning under his fingers. A sickening wave of helplessness washed over him. She wasn't using technology to block him; she had effortlessly weaponized the household staff and the family's own archaic hierarchy to strip him of his eyes and ears. She was suffocating his control.

Chelsea's G-Wagon violently mounted the curb outside a luxury apartment building in SoHo.

She kicked the car door open. She slid her dark sunglasses over her eyes and marched toward the glass entrance.

The doorman stepped forward to block her path.

Chelsea didn't slow down. She reached into her bag, pulled out a stack of hundred-dollar bills, and slammed them into the man's chest. Her glare made him freeze in his tracks.

She stepped into the elevator and slammed the button for the penthouse. A cruel, vicious smile stretched across her face.

In the study, Hazel stopped writing.

She stared down at the terrifying financial conclusions on the paper. A sharp, lethal glint flashed in her eyes.