Chapter 5 - The Master’s Hand
In a glass-walled penthouse overlooking the financial district, Julian Vance sat behind a massive black granite desk, swirling a snifter of cognac. Across from him sat Victoria, wrapped in a mink coat, her wrists showing faint red marks from where the handcuffs had been secured hours prior. Her face was contorted in a mixture of fear and insatiable greed.
"You promised me he would be dead by midnight, Julian!" Victoria hissed, slamming her manicured hand on the desk. "The hit team failed! They missed the SUV!"
Julian didn't even blink. He took a slow sip of his drink, his cold gray eyes reflecting the flickering city lights below. "A minor inconvenience, Victoria. Ethan was always too slippery to be taken out by simple muscle. But while he’s playing soldier in the woods, my legal team has seized control of his primary holding accounts."
He slid a document across the desk toward her. Victoria snatched it up, her eyes scanning the legal jargon rapidly. Her jaw dropped. "A court injunction? On what grounds?"
"Fraud. Embezzlement. The very charges he tried to pin on you," Julian said with a chilling chuckle. "I had three key board members sign affidavits claiming Ethan was siphoning funds to illegal offshore accounts in Switzerland. By tomorrow morning, the Securities and Exchange Commission will freeze all of Ethan’s assets, issue a federal warrant for his arrest, and name me temporary receiver of Vance-Sterling Global."
Victoria’s eyes gleamed with sadistic delight. "He’ll be broke. A fugitive."
"He’ll be ruined," Julian corrected coldly. "And once he’s stripped of his money, his status, and his legal protections, he will crawl to me. And that’s when I will give him to you to finish off."
The heavy oak doors of the penthouse opened, and a shadowy figure stepped into the ambient glow of the room. He walked with a heavy cane, the tip tapping rhythmically against the Italian marble floor. He wore a tailor-made double-breasted suit, his hair snow-white, his face scarred along the jawline.
Victoria gasped, taking an involuntary step back. "Nolan..."
Nolan Sterling, long thought dead, paused at the edge of the desk, leaning heavily on his silver-headed cane. His dark eyes, identical to Ethan’s father’s, burned with decades of unadulterated hatred.
"You speak too much, Victoria," Nolan growled, his voice deep and metallic from years of vocal cord damage. "Ethan is not his father. He is smarter, faster, and far more dangerous when cornered. If you underestimate him, he will burn this city to the ground around us."
Nolan turned his gaze to Julian. "Did you find the girl? The maid?"
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"Why do you care about a maid, Father?" Julian asked, frowning slightly. "She’s a nobody."
"She is not a nobody!" Nolan roared, striking his cane against the granite desk with a deafening crack. "Her real name is Clara Sterling. She is my brother’s missing daughter—and the rightful owner of fifty-one percent of the master voting shares in this entire empire!"
