Chapter 5 - The Desperate Hunt
By noon on Wednesday, the financial district of Lower Manhattan was in a state of absolute, unmitigated panic.
The offices of Weston Capital on the forty-eighth floor of One Liberty Plaza were surrounded by six camera crews from CNBC, Bloomberg, and the Wall Street Journal.
The stock of Weston Logistics & Acquisitions had tumbled forty-two percent in four hours of active trading, triggering two automated volatility halts on the New York Stock Exchange.
Inside his corner office, Andrew Weston was tearing his hair out.
His three-thousand-dollar bespoke suit jacket lay crumpled on the sofa; his tie was shoved into his pocket; his eyes were bloodshot and circled by dark, purplish hollows of sleeplessness and terror.
Across his desk sat Richard Vance—his lead corporate defense attorney—and Bradley Cole, his primary liaison with the institutional lenders.
“What do you mean she can't be located?” Andrew roared, slamming his coffee mug onto the glass desk so hard that dark roast espresso splashed across his spreadsheets. “She’s six months pregnant! She drives an eight-year-old Subaru! How hard is it to find a pregnant woman in Pennsylvania?”
Bradley Cole took off his gold-rimmed reading glasses, rubbing his eyes with an exhausted groan.
“Andrew, listen to me,” Bradley said, his voice flat with despair. “We sent two private investigators to the address listed on her driver’s license in Lancaster—the farmhouse on Mill Creek Road. The local constable stopped our car half a mile from the gate. He told our men that if they took one step onto the private road, he had standing warrants to arrest them for criminal trespass and felony stalking.”
“A constable?” Andrew sneered, pacing the room like a caged animal. “Bribe him! Give him ten thousand dollars!”
“You don't have ten thousand dollars, Andrew,” Richard Vance interrupted coldly.
Andrew froze mid-stride, spinning on his heel. “What did you say?”
Richard opened a certified legal ledger bearing the gold seal of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.
“At nine o’clock this morning,” Richard explained, reading with clinical detachment, “The Sterling Sovereign Trust filed an involuntary Chapter 11 petition against Weston Capital in federal court, citing thirty-two million dollars in defaulted debt obligations. Every corporate bank account carrying your name has been placed under administrative receivership. Your personal black card was declined twenty minutes ago when Lila tried to buy a five-thousand-dollar handbag at Bergdorf Goodman.”
As if on cue, the heavy mahogany double doors of the executive suite banged open.
Lila Summers stormed into the office, her face flushed with fury, her crimson silk wrap from the night before rumpled and stained, holding her iPhone in one hand and three luxury shopping bags in the other.
“Andrew!” Lila shrieked, ignoring the two attorneys completely. “The cashier at Bergdorf confiscated my card! She cut it in half with scissors in front of twenty people! She told me the account was flagged for grand larceny! What is going on?”
Andrew stared at her.
For the first time in six months, the intoxicating spell of her red hair, her youth, and her flattered vanity broke completely.
He didn't see an exotic prize anymore. He saw an expensive, parasitic millstone that had dragged his entire multi-million-dollar life straight into an open furnace.
“Shut up, Lila,” Andrew muttered, rubbing his temples.
Lila gasped, her eyes widening in indignant shock. “What did you say to me? I left my apartment for you! I endured that boring charity ball for you! You promised me we’d be in the Hamptons by Friday!”
“I said shut your mouth!” Andrew roared, lunging across the desk, sweeping a stack of acrylic trophies onto the floor with a concussive, shattering crash. “I am forty million dollars in debt! My company is entering bankruptcy! And you’re screaming about handbags?”
Lila took two steps backward, her lip trembling, her face twisting into that ugly, venomous sneer of a social climber whose ladder had just snapped in half.
“You’re broke,” Lila whispered, looking at him with pure, unmitigated contempt. “You’re completely broke. That quiet little mouse didn't just leave you, Andrew. She owned you. The whole time, she owned you.”
Before Andrew could grab her arm, the door opened again.
A female administrative assistant stood in the threshold, her face the color of chalk, holding a registered courier envelope bound with dark blue silk ribbon.
“Mr. Weston,” the assistant stammered. “A courier from the Manhattan Supreme Court just delivered this. Personal service.”
Andrew snatched the envelope, tearing the blue ribbon with his teeth.
Inside lay an Order of Emergency Injunction and Notice of Extraordinary Shareholder Meeting, scheduled for Friday morning at nine o'clock in the Grand Ballroom of the New York Athletic Club.
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And at the bottom of the order, listed as the majority shareholder commanding fifty-eight percent of the voting equity, was a single name:
Emma Claire Sterling.
