Chapter 3 - Dismantling the Empire
"Wait! Please! Stop!" Arthur Vance dropped to his knees on the marble floor, his hands clasped together in desperate supplication before Marc Sterling. "Take the house! Take the cars! Take whatever money is left in our personal accounts! Just don't destroy Vance Construction! It took three generations of my family to build this business!"
Marc Sterling didn't even look down at the kneeling patriarch. He stepped past him, pulling a folding wireless projector from his briefcase and placing it on a marble pedestal in the middle of the drawing room.
With a soft blue flash, a massive ten-foot holographic screen lit up against the tapestried wall.
It displayed the live trading charts of the Euronext Paris exchange. Across the screen, glowing red numbers were tumbling down like a avalanche off a steep cliff.
VANCE INFRASTRUCTURE GROUP (VIG.PA) — DOWN 42% TRADING HALTED: UNEXPLAINED MASS SELL-OFF
"Three generations to build," Marc said smoothly, pulling a thin cigar from his pocket and lighting it with a silver lighter. "And four minutes for me to tear down."
Arthur stared at the wall, his eyes wide with horror as he watched fifty years of family wealth vaporize in real time.
"How... how are you doing this?!" Arthur sobbed. "We have institutional backers! We have state contracts!"
"You had state contracts, Arthur," Julien interjected, pulling a stack of legal notices from his case and dropping them onto the marble floor right in front of Arthur’s face. "Forty-five minutes ago, the Ministry of Transport received an anonymous, fully authenticated dossier detailing thirty-two instances of bribery, forged concrete density reports, and offshore tax evasion linked directly to your desk."
Julien pointed a long, elegant finger at the screen.
"At 10:20 PM, the Minister signed the executive revocation order. All seven of your active construction sites across Paris have been seized by federal marshals. Your bank accounts at BNP Paribas and Crédit Agricole have been frozen under federal anti-corruption statutes."
Valérie let out a piercing shriek, clutching her throat as she stumbled backward against a velvet sofa. "No! That’s impossible! Our money! What about my accounts in Switzerland?!"
Marc took a slow drag of his cigar, blowing a delicate ring of blue smoke into the air above her head.
"Ah, the Geneva private accounts," Marc smiled faintly. "Mrs. Vance, did you really think transferring six million euros through a shell company in Saint Kitts would keep it safe from me? I built the software those Swiss banks use to detect money laundering. I closed those accounts ten minutes before we drove through your front gates. You currently possess exactly zero euros."
Chloé, who had been hiding behind the grand piano, suddenly realized the ship was sinking faster than the Titanic. She carefully stepped out, clutching her designer handbag, trying to look like an innocent bystander who had simply wandered into the wrong house.
"Isaac..." Chloé whimpered, looking over at Isaac who was still pinned to the table under Noah’s massive hand. "I... I think I should go. My mother is sick... I need to get back to Paris—"
"Sit down, Chloé," Caleb said without looking up from his tablet.
Chloé froze, her heel caught on the edge of the rug. "Excuse me? You can't talk to me like that! I haven't done anything wrong! I’m just Isaac’s friend!"
"You're not his friend, Chloé," Caleb said, finally turning his dark, penetrating gaze onto her. "You're a professional corporate honeypot hired by the Moretti Syndicate nine months ago to extract insider architectural blueprints from Isaac’s laptop."
The entire room went dead silent once more.
Isaac’s head snapped toward Chloé, his face twisting into a hideous mask of disbelief through his tears. "What?! What did he just say?!"
Caleb tapped his screen, and a new window popped up on the giant wall projection.
It displayed hundreds of high-resolution photographs of Chloé at luxury resorts in Ibiza, Monaco, and Dubai—not with Isaac, but with three notorious figures of the Italian underworld. Below the photos were dozens of text messages, bank wire confirmations, and audio recordings of Chloé mocking Isaac’s incompetence to her handlers.
"The idiot actually thinks I love him," Chloé’s recorded voice echoed clearly through the Baccarat-lit ballroom. "He gave me his master keycard after two glasses of wine. He’s so desperate for validation it’s almost pathetic."
Isaac stared at the screen, his chest heaving, his heart shattering into a thousand pathetic pieces. The mistress he had paraded in front of his wife, the woman he had bought a thirty-thousand-euro silver silk dress for, had treated him like an absolute fool.
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Chloé’s face turned from pale to green. She backed away slowly, but two of Léo’s tactical men stepped behind her, locking their arms firmly behind her back.
"You see, Isaac?" I whispered, walking up to the edge of the dining table, looking down at my broken husband. "You thought you were a king sitting on a throne. But you were just a clown surrounded by parasites."
