Chapter 107 - The Sister’s Leverage
"I audited you, Arthur," I said, my voice echoing off the curved glass walls of the alpine rotunda. "You built the Helvetia Consortium on a fatal assumption: you assumed that because you owned the genetic patent on Project Elgin, you owned the financial clearing house."
I turned the screen of my laptop toward the bed.
The crimson numbers that had been counting down were gone. In their place was a brilliant, flashing green confirmation seal from the Swiss Federal Banking Commission (FINMA) in Bern.
"At 6:12 AM Zurich time," I explained, speaking with the icy calm of a forensic prosecutor, "I executed Margaret Sterling’s posthumous codicil. I proved that Thomas Vance, Eleanor Vance, and Arthur Sterling-Holt had engaged in systematic custodial embezzlement exceeding four hundred and twenty million dollars over a twenty-four-year cycle."
Eleanor’s knees buckled. She slid down against the glass wall, clutching her designer handbag to her chest like a shield, her face gray with terror. "No... no, that's impossible. Thomas said the offshore accounts were blind—"
"Thomas was a bookkeeper with a community college certificate who learned how to use wire proxies in the 1990s," I snapped, glaring down at her with undisguised contempt. "I am a senior forensic auditor. You left a paper trail so wide a first-year intern could have followed it with a highlighter."
I looked back at Arthur, whose heart monitor was now shrieking in a rapid, arrhythmic cadence.
"Under Article 14 of Margaret's trust, any attempt to harvest genetic material from an Elgin specimen through coercion or biological conservatorship instantly triggers an irrevocable transfer of all parent shares to the designated legal survivor. Which means, Arthur... you don't own this clinic. You don't own those dialysis machines. You don't even own the hospital gown you're dying in."
"Brandt!" Arthur rasped, his eyes bulging as he tried to lift his torso from the pillows. "Brandt, kill him! Order the Aegis team to take him! Now!"
Brandt didn't move. He stood by the airlock doors, his hands resting calmly in the pockets of his charcoal overcoat, his expression totally neutral.
"My contract is with the Margaret Sterling Estate, Arthur," Brandt said softly. "The estate has recognized Julian Vance as the sole surviving managing trustee. Your personal accounts have been frozen by the Zurich cantonal prosecutor as of twelve minutes ago."
"You... you traitorous bastard!" Arthur choked, blood flecking his cracked lips.
Suddenly, the encrypted satellite phone in Clara’s coat pocket began to vibrate with a violent, urgent buzz. She pulled it out, glanced at the screen, and tapped the speakerphone button.
"Julian?"
It was Beatrice again. But she wasn't crying anymore. Her voice was cold, sharp, and laced with an adrenaline-fueled hysteria.
"Beatrice," I said, keeping my eyes on Eleanor, who looked up at the sound of her daughter's voice. "I told you to go to the 1st District."
"I didn't go to the police, Julian," Beatrice said, her breath ragged over the speaker. "I went to the Naperville storage unit. Before Arthur’s men could get there."
Eleanor let out a strangled shriek. "Beatrice! No! Don't touch the silver racks! Don't touch them!"
"Shut up, Mom!" Beatrice screamed through the phone, the audio clipping in our ears. "You lied to me my whole life! You told me Julian was the reason we were poor! You told me he was holding back Dad’s money! I just opened the safe inside Server Rack Three!"
"What did you find, Beatrice?" I asked, my voice steady.
"It’s not just bank papers, Julian," Beatrice said, her voice dropping to a horrifying whisper. "There’s a cryogenic transport canister. It’s marked *'Specimen 03: Female Ovum Donor — Beatrice Vance'*. Mom didn't just sell you to this sick bastard. She harvested my eggs when I had my appendix out in high school! She was going to sell my unborn children to this consortium the second Arthur’s treatment was completed!"
The air was sucked completely out of the pavilion.
Clara looked at Eleanor with a horror so profound it transcended anger. Eleanor curled into a fetal position on the polished floor, sobbing hysterically into her knees, completely broken.
"Beatrice," I said into the phone, my voice dropping low. "Where are you right now?"
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"I’m at the Chicago Federal Plaza," Beatrice said, her voice shaking with righteous, unhinged fury. "I have the canister. I have Thomas’s original hard drives. And I am standing in front of the FBI field office. If you don't save yourself in Geneva right now, Julian... I am blowing this entire family into the sun."
***
