Chapter 8 - THE BOARDROOM INVASION
By 10:00 AM on Wednesday, the emergency shareholder meeting of Apex Mobility was convened in the grand ballroom of the Palace Hotel in San Francisco.
Over four hundred investors, industry analysts, and reporters packed the velvet-lined auditorium. Rumors had circulated on Wall Street since dawn that Apex had lost its second prototype in a catastrophic mountain crash, and that Titan Autonomous was preparing a hostile takeover bid at three dollars per share—a ninety-five percent discount on the company's valuation.
Marcus Cole, the predatory CEO of Titan, sat in the front row. He was impeccably dressed in a double-breasted Brioni suit, his silver hair slicked back, a thin, triumphant smirk resting on his lips as he whispered to his investment bankers.
At the podium stood Arthur Vance, his hands trembling as he adjusted the microphone.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Arthur began, his voice lacking any authority. "In light of recent... developmental anomalies and the ongoing regulatory inquiries regarding our highway testing protocols, the board has been presented with an all-cash acquisition offer from Titan Autonomous."
The room erupted into furious murmurs. Reporters scrambled to draft breaking news alerts on their laptops.
"Before we hold the formal board vote," Arthur continued, raising his hands, "I must announce that our Chief Executive Officer, Victoria Sterling, has been unreachable for the past fourteen hours, and under corporate charter section four..."
BANG!
The heavy oak doors at the back of the ballroom were kicked open with enough force to rattle the crystal chandeliers.
Every camera swung around.
Walking down the center aisle, flanked by four federal agents from the Department of Justice, was Victoria Sterling.
She wasn't wearing a designer gown or a tailored silk suit. She wore her dirty work boots, dark denim jeans with grease stains across the thighs, and a simple black long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled up to reveal a bandage wrapped around her left forearm. Her face was clean of makeup, her eyes burning with an unholy, absolute fury that silenced the four hundred people in the room instantly.
Beside her walked Jamal Washington.
He wore a sharp, charcoal-gray suit—tailored perfectly to his massive frame, broad-shouldered and imposing—with an open-collar white dress shirt that revealed the silver chain he wore around his neck. He looked like an emperor who had traded his throne for an industrial forge and conquered both.
"Sit down, Arthur," Victoria's voice echoed through the ballroom without the aid of a microphone, cold, clear, and ringing like an executioner’s bell.
Arthur practically collapsed into his chair.
Victoria walked straight onto the stage, took the podium, and glared down at Marcus Cole in the front row.
"At 6:14 this morning," Victoria announced, pointing toward the massive projection screens hanging behind her, "the Apex Detroit Iron prototype crossed the Nevada state line. It completed the seven-hundred-and-fifty-mile mountain haul from San Francisco to Salt Lake City in eleven hours, twenty-two minutes, without a human driver, without a single mechanical error, and with a fuel efficiency rating forty percent higher than any autonomous platform currently in development."
The screens flashed to life, displaying live video footage of the massive silver truck pulling smoothly into the Salt Lake City distribution hub, met by cheering local logistics workers.
The ballroom erupted into absolute pandemonium. Investors leaped to their feet, cheering and waving papers in the air.
Marcus Cole stood up, his face purple with rage. "This is an unverified stunt! That vehicle wasn't operating under DOT compliance! The telemetry has been faked!"
Jamal stepped up to the second microphone.
He didn't yell. He didn't lose his temper. He simply opened a black leather folder and removed a stack of documents bearing the official gold seal of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
"The only thing faked, Mr. Cole," Jamal said, his voice cutting through the noise like a diesel locomotive, "was your electronic signature on the offshore shell company that wired three hundred thousand dollars to Julian Vance to cut our hydraulic lines."
A synchronized gasp sucked the air out of the ballroom.
Two federal agents walked down the center aisle, stopping directly behind Marcus Cole's chair.
"Marcus Cole," the lead agent said, pulling a pair of steel handcuffs from his belt. "You are under arrest for corporate sabotage, conspiracy to commit interstate wire fraud, and attempted murder. Please place your hands behind your back."
Cole looked around wildly, searching for his attorneys, his publicists, his security detail. But every person in the room took a step back from him as if he carried the plague. Within thirty seconds, the billionaire titan of autonomous trucking was led out of the ballroom in chains, his head hanging low as hundreds of flashbulbs immortalized his ruin.
Victoria turned from the podium and looked at Jamal.
Before four hundred investors, sixty reporters, and twenty live television cameras, she didn't issue a press release. She didn't check with her legal team.
May you like
She stepped across the stage, wrapped her arms around Jamal's neck, pulled him down to her, and kissed him with a fierce, breathless passion that sent the entire ballroom into an uproar of thunderous applause.
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