Chapter 378
“Try me,” Isolde said, her voice hard as steel. “Block my path again, and I will make one phone call that ties your family’s assets up in litigation for the next decade.” She reached into her coat pocket and held up her phone. “Shall I start with the SEC, or go straight to the Treasury Department?”
Lydia scrambled backward and threw herself into the back seat.
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“You’re crazy!” she shrieked, slamming the door.
The driver jumped back in and the car sped away, running a yellow light to escape.
Isolde stood on the sidewalk and exhaled a long, shaky breath. Her hands were trembling slightly — but not from fear, she realized. It was pure, unfiltered adrenaline. The bluff had worked flawlessly. The Lancasters were cowards when confronted with real power.
She turned and finished the walk to the school.
The heavy wooden doors swung open and Effie came running out, her backpack bouncing with each step, waving a piece of paper above her head.
“Mommy! I got an A in calculus!”
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Isolde dropped to one knee and caught her daughter in a tight hug, burying her face in Effie’s hair.
“I know you did, baby,” she whispered fiercely.
She held on a moment longer, looking over Effie’s shoulder at the empty street where the black sedan had fled.
“No one hurts us anymore,” she promised the empty air.
The Carson Dynamics offices were quiet, the late afternoon sun casting long, sharp shadows across the glass walls.
Arland walked into Isolde’s office and dropped a thick black leather folder onto the center of her desk. “It’s confirmed,” he said, a predatory grin spreading across his face. “CloudPath wants to integrate our drone stabilization tech into their delivery fleet.”
Isolde opened the folder. The first page was a dossier on the CEO. “Carter Sterling. He has a reputation.”
“He’s a shark,” Arland agreed, leaning against the edge of the desk. “And more importantly, he absolutely hates the Lancasters.”
Isolde looked up. “Why?”
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“Grayson outbid him for the Port Authority infrastructure contract last year,” Arland explained. “Sterling lost millions in prep work. He holds a grudge.”
Isolde smiled — a cold, calculating expression. “The enemy of my enemy.”
She flipped to the third page, her finger tracing the legal jargon until she found what she was looking for. “But this isn’t just a collaboration, Arland,” she said, tapping the paper. “It’s a stepping stone.” She pointed to a specific sub-clause. “Data sharing.”
“If we link our stabilization software with CloudPath’s fleet,” she continued, her mind working ten steps ahead, “we get backdoor access to their real-time urban mapping data — wind shear metrics, structural density scans, micro-weather patterns for the entire city.”
Arland frowned, trying to follow her logic. “And what do we do with weather data?”
Isolde looked up, her eyes burning with dark intent. “We use it to prove that InnoTech’s modular buildings will fail in real-world conditions. We don’t just beat them in the market — we simulate their destruction publicly. We show the world exactly how Belle’s vision will collapse under pressure.”
Arland let out a low, impressed whistle. “You are vicious, Isolde. I like it.”
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