Chapter 9 - SLOANE’S DESPERATE BETRAYAL
Abandoned by Julian and financially ruined by Grant’s collapse,
Sloane found herself completely cornered.
Her luxury hotel suite reservation was canceled due to her credit cards being declined.
Desperate and heavily pregnant,
she dragged her designer luggage down to the hotel lobby.
She waited in the rain for a taxi that refused to stop for her drenched,
miserable figure.
She finally took a subway train down to the dilapidated apartment complex where her estranged mother lived.
Her mother slammed the front door in her face,
refusing to harbor a disgraced social climber.
With nowhere left to turn,
Sloane decided to strike back at the only person she thought she could manipulate.
She placed an anonymous call to a tabloid journalist,
offering to spill all of Grant's deepest secrets.
She claimed she had secret voice recordings of Grant planning illegal corporate cover-ups and insider trading.
The journalist agreed to meet her at a dimly lit coffee shop in downtown Chicago for an exclusive interview.
Sloane arrived twenty minutes early,
shivering in her thin trench coat,
clutching a battered USB drive.
But when the person walking through the coffee shop door appeared,
it wasn't a journalist.
It was me,
accompanied by two licensed private investigators and a process server.
Sloane froze in her tracks,
turning to run toward the exit,
but the private investigators blocked the door.
I walked slowly over to her table,
pulling out a chair and sitting down gracefully.
I ordered a hot cup of chamomile tea while Sloane stared at me with undisguised hatred.
She spat venom across the table,
calling me a calculated monster who ruined her life.
I laughed softly,
reminding her that she chose to play a high-stakes game without knowing the rules.
I slid a legal document across the table toward her trembling fingers.
It was a permanent restraining order and a multi-million-dollar defamation lawsuit filed on behalf of my new foundation.
I told her that every word she recorded or leaked would be met with criminal perjury charges.
Furthermore,
I informed her that Julian Sterling had already revoked any medical financial support for her unborn twins.
Sloane realized with devastating certainty that she had been completely checkmated on every single front.
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She buried her face in her hands and sobbed uncontrollably inside the crowded café.
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