Page 11 of Thirty-Two Calls

Connor Radcliff stood rigidly before the massive mahogany desk, a thin, manila folder clutched in his hands. It had taken his team of private investigators less than forty-eight hours to bypass the scrubbed digital networks and resort to analog bribery. They had pulled the hard-copy archives from the 4th Precinct.

"Leave it, Connor," Lance said, his voice a hollow, unrecognizable rasp.

Connor placed the file on the leather blotter and quietly backed out of the room, the heavy oak doors sealing Lance inside with his ghosts.

Lance stared at the manila folder for a long time before his trembling fingers finally flipped it open. The stark, black-and-white police report stared back at him.

Victim: Evangeline Foster. Date: November 12th. Incident: Attempted Sexual Assault / Battery.

Lance’s vision tunneled. The air rushed out of his lungs in a violent, jagged exhale. He read the clinical, detached summary of the alleyway. The torn coat. The bruising. The escape. And then, the addendum added by the interviewing detectives—the thinly veiled character assassination that dismissed her as a woman of compromised morals, questioning if she had "enticed" the attack due to her "associations."

The page blurred. A profound, violent wave of nausea crashed over him, so intense he had to grip the edge of the desk to keep from collapsing.

Thirty-two calls.

She had been bleeding. She had been terrified, shivering in a sterile police station, surrounded by the very people who were judging her for loving him. She had dialed his number thirty-two times, begging for the man who promised to protect her, the man who held the world in his hands.

And he had sent her to voicemail to protect the optics of Camille’s father’s heart attack.

A ragged, agonizing sound tore its way up Lance’s throat—a sob of pure, unadulterated self-loathing. He had left her. The woman who had sacrificed her twenties, her dignity, and her brilliant light to exist in the shadows of his life. He had abandoned her to face the absolute worst moment of her life entirely alone.

He was a monster. The realization didn't just break his heart; it shattered his entire perception of himself. He fell back into his leather chair, burying his face in his hands as the crushing weight of his arrogance buried him alive.

But as the minutes ticked by, the agonizing grief began to calcify.

Lance Rothwood had not built a global empire by succumbing to despair. He was, at his core, a master tactician. If he allowed this grief to break him now, he would never be able to stand up again. He would never be able to find her.

He lowered his hands, his dark eyes fixing on the sprawling city skyline beyond the glass. The tears were gone, replaced by an absolute, terrifying coldness.

First, he had to set the board. He had to dismantle the world that had dared to hurt her. He had to burn the Rothwood heritage to the ground until it was nothing but ash, and then, only then, could he go to her. He would find her, and he would lay the ruins of his empire at her feet. He would give her anything—his wealth, his name, his very life—if she asked for it.

Why, he thought, a bitter, self-deprecating sneer touching his lips, did it take losing my soul to realize what it was worth?

Lance reached for the phone. "Connor," he said, his voice now a lethal, icy calm. "Get the Chief of Police of the 4th Precinct, along with Detectives Miller and Davis, into my boardroom. Now. If they refuse, tell them I am pulling the Rothwood Foundation’s pension funding by three o'clock."

The Reckoning

The Rothwood Industries boardroom was designed to intimidate. Suspended on the fifty-fifth floor, the room was a cavern of black marble and brushed steel.

Police Chief Harrison, a hardened veteran of city politics, shifted uncomfortably in the plush leather chair. Beside him sat Detective Miller and Officer Davis, both looking distinctly pale. They had been summoned with the urgency of a bomb threat, escorted up the private elevators by silent security personnel.

The double doors opened, and Lance Rothwood walked in. He didn't sit. He bypassed the head of the long table and walked directly toward the three officers, tossing the manila folder onto the black marble surface with a sharp, echoing crack.

"Chief Harrison," Lance began, his voice dangerously soft. "Are you familiar with the operational protocols of your detectives?"

"Mr. Rothwood, I assure you —"

"Because I am struggling to understand the legal framework under which a victim of a violent street assault is cross-examined on her moral character," Lance interrupted, his dark eyes locking onto Detective Miller.

Miller swallowed hard, the arrogance he had displayed in the interrogation room weeks ago entirely vaporized by the terrifying presence of the billionaire. "Sir, in cases involving... certain high-profile associations, we have to establish if the attack was transactional."

"Transactional," Lance repeated, the word dripping with venom. "A woman is dragged into an alleyway, fights off her attacker, escapes to your precinct bleeding, and your immediate investigative priority is to determine if her skirt was too short? Is that standard legal procedure, Detective? Or is that the systemic failure of a precinct run by judgmental, incompetent cowards?"

Officer Davis opened her mouth to speak, but Lance’s glare pinned her to her seat.

"You took an oath," Lance’s voice rose, vibrating with a righteous, suppressed wrath. "To protect and serve impartially. Yet, when Evangeline Foster walked through your doors, you didn't see a citizen in danger. You saw a tabloid headline. You saw a target for your own pathetic prejudices. You humiliated a victim to the point where she felt she had no legal recourse."

Chief Harrison's face flushed a deep, embarrassed crimson. He looked down at the file, then at his two detectives, the reality of the catastrophic liability staring him in the face. Everything Lance was saying was legally sound, morally devastating, and an absolute PR nightmare.