Chapter 5 - The Corporate Raid
By sunrise, the war room inside my corporate headquarters on the forty-second floor of the Nashville tower looked like a military command center.
Marcus had pulled in three of the best forensic investigators in the country, alongside our chief corporate litigator, a bulldog of a lawyer named Harrison Vance.
"We have three simultaneous targets," Harrison said, pacing in front of a massive digital whiteboard covered in financial flowcharts, wire transfer logs, and corporate registration documents. "First: Tessa Whitmore’s personal bank accounts and trust funds. We've filed an emergency ex-parte asset freeze under civil racketeering laws. Every dime she owns is currently locked."
"Second," Marcus chimed in, tapping the screen where a picture of a sleek office building in downtown Atlanta appeared. "The Oakridge Foundation. We tracked the IP addresses of the shell company's online portal back to a private server leased by Julian Thorne’s consulting firm. It wasn't an adoption agency, Rowan. It was a trafficking front used to funnel high-value infants into wealthy adoptive circles overseas, funded by Tessa’s family trust to eliminate any future heirs to your estate."
My blood turned to ice. Heirs. Tessa had known that if Emily gave birth to three children—especially a boy and twin girls carrying the Bellamy bloodline—our divorce settlement, our family trust, and my entire corporate empire would eventually be split among my biological children, leaving no room for whatever parasitic future Tessa had planned for herself.
"Where is the baby?" I asked, my voice dangerously calm. "Give me a location."
"Private airfield outside Chattanooga," Marcus said, clicking to a new slide showing flight manifests and private jet registration numbers. "A chartered Gulfstream registered to a holding company linked to Tessa's father is scheduled to depart for Zurich at noon today. On board passenger manifest: one six-month-old infant registered under an encrypted passport alias, accompanied by a pediatric nurse retained by Julian Thorne."
I looked at my watch. It was 8:15 AM.
"Four hours," I said, grabbing my suit jacket from the back of my chair.
"Rowan, wait," Harrison cautioned, holding up a hand. "If you go down to that airfield with private security, you could trigger a jurisdictional nightmare. We need to loop in the FBI’s child abduction division. If we have federal law enforcement execute the interdiction warrant—"
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"I am not waiting for federal red tape while my daughter is loaded onto a private jet bound for Europe," I interrupted, my tone leaving zero room for argument. "Marcus, prep the helicopter on the roof. Harrison, you get the emergency custody order signed by Judge Miller within thirty minutes. I’ll meet you at the tarmac."
"Boss," Marcus grinned grimly, grabbing his car keys. "Let's go get our girl."
