Chapter 8 - Splintered Glass
Patricia did not collapse like Julian.
Decades of aristocratic arrogance, of riding roughshod over anyone she deemed beneath her, made it impossible for her to accept defeat. Even as the minority shareholders fled the room in terror to save their own investments, Patricia rounded the quartz table, her red fingernails curved like talons, her face twisted in demonic fury.
"You miserable, ungrateful little whore!" she screamed, lunging directly at me. "Everything Sam had was because of ME! His name! His status! His blood! You came from nothing, your father was a dirty union contractor, and you think you can take my family's legacy?!"
Liam stepped smoothly between us, catching Patricia’s wrists in mid-air with an iron grip that brought her screeching to a halt.
"Hands off the client, Mrs. Vance," Liam said in a voice that was pure gravel.
"Get your filthy hands off me!" Patricia shrieked, kicking wildly at his shins. "I'll have you ruined! I'll buy your miserable little security firm and burn it to the ground!"
"You won't be buying anything, Patricia," I said, walking calmly to the head of the table where Julian was sitting with his head in his hands. "As the seventy-two percent majority shareholder of Vance Logistics, my first official act is to terminate Julian Cole as Chief Executive Officer for cause, effective immediately. My second act is to revoke all corporate credit cards, vehicle leases, and residential allowances previously granted to Patricia Vance."
Patricia stopped fighting Liam’s grip, her breathing ragged, her eyes bulging. "You... you can't evict me. The townhome on 74th Street is family property!"
"The townhome is owned by Vance Logistics, Patricia," I said, looking her up and down with clinical indifference. "You haven't paid a dime of rent in twelve years. The moving trucks will arrive at noon tomorrow. If your personal belongings are not removed by five o'clock, they will be deposited on the sidewalk for municipal bulk pickup."
"You monster!" Patricia wailed, suddenly clutching her chest in a desperate, theatrical attempt to manufacture a medical emergency. "My heart... I can't breathe! You're killing me! Julian, call an ambulance! She's having me killed!"
"Save the performance, Patricia," Evelyn Ross said, not even looking up from her tablet. "The building has a medical bay on the third floor. I'm sure the EMTs will be happy to monitor your vitals while the federal prosecutors read you your rights."
The theatrical chest-clutching vanished instantly. Patricia straightened her posture, realized she was entirely isolated, and looked at me with a hatred so deep it seemed almost inhuman.
"Sam won't let you do this," she spat, her voice shaking with venomous spite. "He will come back. He loves me. He will never abandon his mother!"
"Sam already abandoned you, Patricia," I said quietly.
I picked up my phone and unlocked the screen.
"While you were planning to steal forty million dollars with Julian, Sam took the five million I offered him and boarded Swiss International Air flight LX17 forty minutes ago. He didn't leave a forwarding address for you. He didn't even leave money for your bail."
Patricia blinked once, twice. The color drained from her cheeks, leaving behind an ashen, hollow mask. "No... no, Sammy wouldn't... he wouldn't leave his mother..."
"He left you the same way he left Vanessa twenty years ago," I said, turning my back on her. "The same way he tried to leave me. Because Sam doesn't love anyone, Patricia. Not Vanessa. Not me. And certainly not you. You built him into a coward, and now you have to live with the monster you raised."
Liam released her wrists. Patricia stumbled backward, catching herself against the glass wall. She looked out over the glittering skyline of Manhattan—the city she had ruled from country clubs and private salons—and for the first time in her life, she had nowhere to go.
She turned and fled through the double doors, her heels clicking in a frantic, uncoordinated scramble down the marble corridor.
Julian Cole looked up from the table, his eyes hollow. "What happens to me, Nora?"
I looked down at the man who had sat at my dining room table for Thanksgiving dinners, who had toasted my marriage while helping Sam forge my signatures.
"You have two hours to clear your personal effects from this office, Julian," I said coldly. "After that, you can explain your accounting methods to the United States Attorney."
I turned and walked toward the panoramic windows, looking out at the harbor where the Statue of Liberty stood small against the vast expanse of the Atlantic.
The company was mine. The fraud was stopped. The conspirators were broken.
"Nora," Evelyn said, approaching with a grim expression on her face, holding her phone to her ear. She covered the mouthpiece. "We have a problem."
I frowned, turning back to her. "What problem? Sam is on the plane. The injunction is permanent."
"It's not about the injunction," Evelyn whispered, her voice tight with sudden dread. "The Port Authority Police just detained a private charter at Teterboro Airport. Vanessa wasn't in Florida. She was trying to board a private jet to Zurich."
"To Zurich?" I repeated, my pulse quickening. "Why Zurich?"
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"Because," Liam intervened, checking his encrypted tablet, his face suddenly turning white as ash, "Sam’s flight didn't clear American airspace. The Swiss Air flight had a mechanical diversion to Boston. And the five-million-dollar escrow account you set up in Zurich? It was cleared out twelve minutes ago by someone using an internal encryption key that didn't belong to Sam."
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