Chapter 5 - Whispers in the Boardroom
At 2:15 p.m., I walked back into the lobby of Whitman & Reed Capital.
The building was buzzing with nervous, electric tension. Word of the ambulance, the blood, and the police presence had spread through Chicago’s financial district like wild prairie fire. Security guards at the turnstiles avoided my eyes; secretaries lowered their heads as I passed.
I had changed out of the charcoal blazer that Ethan had bruised my arm through. I was now wearing an ivory wool power suit, tailored with razor-sharp shoulders, and a silk emerald blouse underneath. My hair was pulled back into an immaculate, severe chignon. My lips were painted a deep, unapologetic crimson.
I did not look like a woman who was mourning. I looked like an executioner.
When the elevator opened onto the twenty-sixth floor, the smell of industrial carpet shampoo and ozone hung heavy in the air. A private biohazard cleaning crew had already steam-cleaned the bullpen carpet, but a faint, dark shadow remained where Madison had bled—a permanent stain beneath the fluorescent lights.
I walked past Ethan’s suite. His door was locked, the blinds drawn tight.
Inside the boardroom at the end of the hall, voices were raised in angry, chaotic debate.
“—it’s a PR disaster! The Tribune is already asking questions about an employee overdosing on firm property!”
“If the audit is delayed, the institutional investors in Boston will freeze the third-quarter capital call!”
I pushed the heavy frosted glass doors open with both hands.
The noise inside died instantly.
Around the twenty-foot mahogany conference table sat the eight senior equity partners of Whitman & Reed—men in their fifties and sixties, seasoned sharks who had worked alongside my father for thirty years.
At the head of the table, sitting in my father’s old leather high-back chair, was Ethan.
He looked up, startled. For a fraction of a second, raw guilt flashed across his features, before he smoothly stood up, adjusting his cuffs, adopting an expression of profound, tender concern.
“Claire,” he said, his voice rich with feigned sympathy. “Sweetheart, what are you doing here? I thought you were resting at home after the trauma at the hospital.”
The other partners looked at me with varying degrees of pity and discomfort.
“I don't rest when our firm is in crisis, Ethan,” I said, walking slowly down the length of the table. My heels clicked like metronome beats on the hardwood perimeter. “And you are sitting in my chair.”
A sharp, collective intake of breath rippled through the room.
Ethan’s smile hardened, his eyes narrowing to slits. “Claire, please. Let’s not do this in front of the executive committee. We’re in the middle of an emergency session to manage the fallout from Madison’s tragic medical emergency.”
“It wasn't a medical emergency, Ethan,” I said, stopping at the head of the table and staring down at him until the silence in the room became unbearable. “It was an attempted homicide.”
A partner named Richard Sterling, my father’s oldest friend, dropped his Montblanc pen onto the glass table with a sharp clatter. “What did you just say, Claire?”
Ethan’s face darkened with dangerous fury. “Claire is in shock, Richard! She’s overwrought. She saw something graphic and she’s confusing herself—”
“Northwestern Memorial Hospital’s surgical trauma unit has formally filed a report with the Chicago Police Department,” I stated, projecting my voice with absolute clarity, ignoring Ethan completely. “Madison Bell was poisoned with industrial-strength abortifacients and lethal doses of Warfarin anticoagulants. Detectives from Area Three Homicide are currently reviewing the building’s security footage from this morning.”
The room exploded into stunned shouts.
“Homicide?”
“Anticoagulants? On our floor?”
“My God, who would do that?”
Ethan slammed his palm against the mahogany table with a deafening crack. “Enough!” he roared, his veneer of gentlemanly restraint cracking open. “This is wild, hysterical speculation! Madison had personal problems! If she ingested something toxic, she brought it in herself!”
“She didn't bring it in,” I said, my voice dropping into a deadly, hypnotic calm that cut straight through his shouting.
Ethan glared at me, his chest heaving. “What are you implying, Claire?”
“I’m not implying anything, Ethan,” I replied, stepping around the chair, forcing him to take a step back or make physical contact in front of the entire board. “I’m stating facts. Madison ate the breakfast that was placed on my desk this morning. The container was brought into this building by someone who had full executive access before the staff arrived at eight o'clock.”
Ethan’s eyes flared with panic. “You’re accusing me? Your own husband? On our anniversary?” He turned to the board, throwing his hands out in theatrical despair. “Gentlemen, you hear this? My wife has been suffering from severe emotional instability for months! Ever since her second miscarriage, she’s been seeing conspiracies everywhere! She’s unwell!”
Richard Sterling stood up, his bushy gray brows drawn together in a deep frown. “Ethan, sit down. Let Claire speak.”
“No, Richard, I will not sit down!” Ethan shouted, his voice cracking with rising hysteria. “I move that the board immediately grant me temporary executive power of attorney over the firm’s operational accounts until Claire can be medically evaluated by an independent psychiatrist!”
The audacity of it took my breath away. He was trying to institutionalize me. In the middle of a board meeting, he was using my past miscarriages—the very babies he had murdered—as a weapon to strip me of my father’s company.
Before Richard could answer, my phone buzzed in my hand.
A text message from Liam Hayes: *I’m inside Ethan’s Gold Coast condo. You need to see this. Sending photos now.*
I looked up from my screen, directly into Ethan Ward’s arrogant, terrified eyes.
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“You want an independent evaluation, Ethan?” I said, cold amusement dancing at the corners of my lips. “We’ll get one. But it won't be from a psychiatrist. It will be from the Cook County State’s Attorney.”
***
