Chapter 38 - Mother Against Serpent
The moment Chloe saw David enter with the baby, she gasped and sprang to her feet. "Leo!" she cried out, taking two stumbling steps forward before two federal marshals stepped laterally, blocking her path. "David! Give me my baby! You kidnapped my son!"
"Shut your mouth, Chloe," I said. My voice was neither loud nor angry; it carried the calm, crushing finality of an iron door closing.
She stopped dead in her tracks, her mouth hanging open, looking at me with a mixture of hatred and absolute panic.
"Evie," Arthur Vance said, stepping forward, his hands in his trouser pockets, though his jaw was clamped so tight the muscles in his cheek were jumping. "You brought federal marshals into my private residence. Do you really believe this theatrical stunt will override the legal corporate filings already logged in Delaware?"
"The Delaware filings were voided at eleven-fifteen this morning, Arthur," I said, walking slowly across the marble floor until I was standing less than six feet from him. "Your board of directors held an emergency vote ninety minutes ago. When the Swiss bank froze your primary liquidity line, your institutional investors exercised their right to replace the chairman of the board."
I pulled a single folded document from my coat pocket and dropped it onto the glass coffee table between us.
"You are no longer the chief executive of Vance Holdings, Arthur. You are an uninvited trespasser in a building owned entirely by the Miller Family Sovereign Trust."
Arthur Vance looked down at the document. For a fraction of a second, the mask of supreme billionaire arrogance slipped, revealing the terrified, hollow old man beneath.
"You couldn't have..." he breathed, his voice cracking. "The board wouldn't dare."
"The board cares about money, Arthur," Frank's deep voice boomed from the doorway. He stepped forward into the warm light of the chandelier, standing tall beside our son. "And you don't have any left."
Vance’s head snapped toward Frank. His skin went the color of dry bone. "Frank... you're dead. I watched the forensic reports..."
"You watched what my friends wanted you to see," Frank replied coldly. "Forty years ago, you murdered my partners and tried to wipe out my family to steal a coal-and-rail charter. Today, you used a cheap, greedy little social climber to try to finish the job."
Chloe turned on Vance like a wounded viper. "You said they couldn't touch the offshore accounts! You promised me twenty-five million dollars! You made me sign those papers against David!"
"Quiet, you foolish girl!" Vance snarled, turning on her with disgust. "You were nothing but a signature! You couldn't even keep an old woman out of a suburban house without botching it!"
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"Enough," I said.
The room fell dead silent.
