When Her Cheating Husband’s Luck Ran Out Chapter 08

When Her Cheating Husband’s Luck Ran Out Chapter 08 The Gift

The Vantage Convention Center was lit from the street to the roof.

A thousand people turned out for Kestrel’s twentieth anniversary. Politicians, executives, reporters, and partners packed the ballroom wall to wall.

Adrian stood on the stage in a black custom suit with his hair combed flat.

He was 60 now, and he had kept himself well enough to pass for early fifties.

Sadie sat in the front row in a red gown with an enormous diamond collar at her throat, her smile polished and correct.

Walter and Cordelia sat beside her.

Walter’s hair had gone completely white and Cordelia pushed him in a wheelchair. She had aged too, with deep lines set into her face, but the look in her eyes had not softened at all.

“Thank you all for coming out tonight to celebrate twenty years of Kestrel Group.” Adrian’s voice carried through the speakers into every corner of the room.

“Twenty years of weathering everything together. Twenty years of pushing forward.”

I stood at the doors in a black suit dress with a folder under my arm.

“Kestrel started as five people in a rented workshop. Today its market value is…”

He stopped mid-sentence. The doors at the back of the hall had swung open.

I walked in. My heels came down sharp on the marble.

Every head in the room turned. Adrian saw me from the stage, and his face changed.

Sadie’s smile locked up. Cordelia recognized me, and her mouth opened without anything coming out of it.

I walked up to the foot of the stage and looked at him. “Mr. Pierce, twenty years and nobody offered me the microphone?”

I didn’t raise my voice. The hall had gone quiet enough that every person in it heard me anyway.

Adrian’s face was awful, but he pushed out a smile. “Josie, you came. Welcome…”

“Don’t call me Josie.” I cut him off before he got any further. “Call me Ms. Pierce.”

A wave of whispering ran through the crowd.

“I came to bring a gift.” I lifted the folder and let it swing. “Twenty years is a big number. A daughter should mark the occasion.”

Adrian’s eyes went careful. “What is this?”

I pulled a document out of the folder and held it up.

4bought Restrel Group. All of it.”

The room came apart. Camera flashes went off in waves and the reporters shoved forward like something had broken loose.

The color drained straight out of Adrian’s face. “What… what did you say?”

“I said Kestrel Group has a new owner as of today. Still a Pierce.” I held his eyes and spaced the words out. “Just not you.”

“That’s impossible!” His voice climbed. “Where would you get that kind of money…”

“Ask your investors whether I have the money.”

A side door opened and three people came through it.

They were Kestrel’s three largest shareholders. They crossed the floor and stopped beside me.

“Mr. Pierce.” The first of them looked straight at Adrian without a trace of heat. “We transferred our entire holdings to Ms. Josephine Pierce. She controls 51 percent of Kestrel Group as of this morning.”

Adrian staggered a step and caught himself on the podium.

‘Have all of you lost your minds? Whatever she offered you…”

‘Was better than anything you had.” The second investor cut across him. “And Ms. Pierce showed us something very interesting.”

slid the second document out. “This is everything behind the affair my mother supposedly had ten years ago.”

opened it flat and turned it toward the cameras.

‘All five photographs were Al composites. Sadie paid $500,000 to an underground studio to build them from nothing.”

Sadie went white.

‘And this is the transcript.” I turned to the next page. “Sadie says it herself. She hired the men who kicked in our door, tied up my nother, and staged those pictures.”