Nadine calls an emergency board meeting first thing in the morning.  I’ve been working with Elise and Hugo since well before dawn.

“You two ready?” I ask.

They nod.

We walk together into the executive board room.

“Never thought I’d step foot in here,” Hugo says.

“Yeah, right,” Elise says. “You totally thought you would.”

“I mean I never thought I’d step foot in here this soon,” he says. “I knew I’d eventually be in here.”

“Don’t pat yourself too hard on the back just yet,” Hunter says. “It’s not like you’re actually on the board.”

We step inside the room, and everyone looks up at me, and then at Elise, with shock.

I ignore it all. Once they find out what Gideon did, seeing me with an intern won’t even register with them.

I sit in the back of the room with Elise and Hugo. As a consultant, it’s my place.

Gideon comes in just one minute before eight o’clock.

His face is even more drained of blood than usual. I have to dig my fingers into the bottom of my chair to stop myself from attacking him.

He locks eyes with Elise, and his mouth drops open.

He knew she’d been rescued, but he sure as fuck didn’t expect her to be here. Or for Nadine to call a meeting so soon after Elise had been rescued.

Nadine is the last to arrive, and she shuts the doors behind her.

“Thank you all for coming,” she says, eyeing each of the board members. “Thanks to almost all of you, that is. There’s one of you I cannot thank. I can’t even look him in the eyes.”

Everyone looks over at me. I laugh. They think Nadine is still pissed off at me?

“No,” Nadine says. “Not Hunter. Hunter is no longer co-CEO--we’ve divorced--but I won’t let personal disagreements stand in the way of business. Hunter is back on as a consultant. He’s still here to help save this company, so please follow my lead and do anything you can to help him get his job done. Understood?”

Everyone mutters a bit, but they all nod. No one can deny how much I’d been turning this place around. Everyone looks fucking relieved that I’m back, as they should.

The board members all start to look amongst each other. They are wondering who Nadine can’t look in the eye. If it’s not me, then who is it?

Elise, Hugo, and I stand up.

“I was kidnapped,” Elise says. “Two days ago. Just after work.”

Everyone gasps. Gideon starts looking nervously toward the exit.

I move toward the door. I’m not letting him get away.

“While my daughter was held hostage,” Nadine says, “someone called me and demanded that I roll back all the changes Hunter had made, and that I do my best to bring Sencorp down. To make it fail.”

The board members are all shouting back and forth at each other now, sticking accusing fingers…mostly toward me.

Hugo hits a button, and the projector turns on. “We’ve done a lot of work,” he says, “to see who is benefitting most from Sencorp’s decline.”

He brings up a slide full of charts. “We see a lot of money just...disappearing. There’s always an excuse or vaguely plausible reason for it to be gone, but it’s always linked to someone who is fired, as if that will solve the problem. The thing is, we think one person is controlling all of these people. He brings someone in to take the fall for him, and he is never held accountable himself. Probably half of you already have suspected him, but we haven’t had anything to implicate him. Until now.”

I see Gideon gripping the table, his knuckles are white. He’s always operated unseen, behind the scenes, but now everyone is about to look right at him.

Hugo hits a button on the remote.

The recording of my conversation starts to play.

I hear my own voice, still audible over the background chatter from the restaurant. “How much did Gideon Fleischmann pay you, Dash?”

Then Dash’s voice. “Gideon caught me snooping on him! Alright? He told me if I had dirt on you, he’d pay me double what you were paying me, every year! It’s nothing personal, but I couldn’t turn down that kind of cash!”

Everyone is whispering and pointing at Gideon.

Gideon stands up and slams his fist down on the table. “This is outrageous! Who is this man in the recording? This is all a set-up!”

Elise steps forward. “The man Hunter is talking to on that recording approached me on the sidewalk, stuck a needle into my neck to knock me out, and then kidnapped me.”

“I won’t stand here and listen to these lies,” Gideon says, moving toward the doors. Toward me.

“The police,” Nadine says, “have already been given all of this information. I’ve ordered security to hold Mr. Fleischmann here until--”

Gideon ties to shove past me, but I stand unwavering in front of the doors.

“You’re lucky I don’t knock your teeth out,” I hiss at him, grabbing him by the collar.

“I should have fucking slit her throat,” he hisses at me.

“I’d hit you,” I say, “but a spineless fuck like you will take plenty of beatings in prison.”

“Spineless?” Gideon says, reaching into his jacket.

I see metal gleaming in his hand, and my instincts take over.

I shove my forearm toward him as he moves forward to stab me. My forearm slams against his, and the knife stops just short of my chest.

I grab his arm with my free hand, and I bend it backward--in the direction arms aren’t meant to bend.

I hear his arm snap, and the knife clatters to the ground. I shove him face first into the wall. Everyone is shouting and pointing, chairs are tipping over, and confusion ensues.

I look back at the shocked faces of the board members, as Gideon squirms and wails against my rock-hard grip. “Anyone still need fucking convincing?”

I hold Gideon down, until the cops bust into the boardroom within a few minutes. They cuff him in front of the entire board and haul him out.

“Alright,” I say, grinning. “Now that we’ve sorted that out, I’m ready to save this company. Who wants to help me?”