How to Tame a Silver Fox – Episode 39
Victor Sloane looked ordinary enough to disappear inside any boardroom: silver cuff links, perfect tailoring, and a courteous smile. Harper understood how he had hidden for years. Monsters were easier to overlook when they resembled donors.
Chris shifted in front of her. Sloane noticed and laughed. “Still using your body to solve every problem. Caroline believed you might become something better.”
Harper refused to let him control the conversation. “The transfer is being recorded. Your accounts will be frozen before you leave this building.”
“Then I should thank you for bringing the only drive that can connect those accounts to me.” His gaze settled on her necklace transmitter. “Did you truly think Sebastian’s security would miss that?”
The corridor doors locked behind them. Chris reached for his weapon, but a red laser appeared against Harper’s dress from a hidden shooter above the stairwell.
Sloane extended his hand. “The drive.”
Harper removed it from her clutch and held it where he could see. Chris had wanted to carry the evidence, but she had insisted that Sloane would underestimate her. Now she needed that assumption to survive.
In the ballroom, Christina stepped onto the stage. Instead of reading the speech her father prepared, she described how Sebastian used the foundation to purchase influence and silence families.
Sebastian moved toward her, but every camera was streaming. Christina named the accounts Maria had sent to her phone, turning the gala into a public confession of the system that protected him.
The distraction reached the corridor as security personnel abandoned their positions to control the ballroom. The laser vanished from Harper’s chest.
Chris attacked Sloane, driving him into the office. Harper rushed to the server terminal and inserted the drive.
A countdown showed three minutes remaining in the transfer. Maria guided Harper through the security prompts while Cole uploaded Caroline’s verification key.
Sloane recovered faster than expected. He struck Chris with a metal sculpture and seized Harper from behind, pressing a blade against her throat.
Chris froze. Blood ran from his temple, but the fear in his face belonged entirely to Harper.
“Cancel the upload,” Sloane ordered. “Or she dies knowing you chose revenge over her.”
Harper saw the terminal reflected in the office window. Thirty seconds remained. Sloane believed she was helpless because Chris could not move.
She drove her heel into Sloane’s instep and dropped her weight, using the same escape that had freed her from Bryan. The blade cut her shoulder instead of her throat.
Chris caught Sloane before he could recover. The upload completed, and alarms sounded across the foundation’s banking network.
Federal agents flooded the ballroom. Sebastian was arrested beneath the cameras his daughter had turned against him, while Sloane was forced to his knees beside Caroline’s evidence.
As an agent reached for Sloane’s wrists, the building went dark. A gunshot followed, and when emergency lights returned, the agent lay wounded while Sloane and the drive had vanished.