Chapter 4 - The Price of Silence
The private lower level of Le Miroir did not look like an upscale French restaurant. Behind the temperature-controlled wine room lay a soundproofed vault lined with cold concrete and exposed copper pipes.
Grant Sterling was tied to a heavy steel chair in the center of the room. His swollen eye was already turning a deep, sickly purple, his tailored suit jacket shredded at the seams. Beside him stood Cal, wiping down brass knuckles with a rag.
The heavy steel door swung open.
Mara walked in first, wearing a long black cashmere coat Vincent had draped over her shoulders to cover her ruined dress. Behind her walked Vincent, flanked by two armed guards who remained by the threshold.
Grant looked up, spitting blood onto the concrete. "Mara... Mara, baby, tell him. Tell this thug to let me go. Your mother was the one who planned it! She told me if I roughed you up, you'd panic and sign over the power of attorney! It was Evelyn’s idea!"
Mara stopped two feet from him. Her heart raced, not with fear, but with a cold, terrifying liberation. For three years since Grant entered her family's house as her stepbrother, he had belittled her, cornered her in empty hallways, and whispered threats about what would happen once Arthur passed away.
"You hit me three times tonight, Grant," Mara said quietly, her voice devoid of emotion. "Once for refusing to hand over my grandfather's safe deposit key. Once for walking toward the door. And once because Lauren laughed while you did it."
"I was stressed!" Grant pleaded, tears cutting tracks through the grime on his face. "The Sterling firm owes tens of millions! If we didn't get your trust fund by midnight, loan sharks were going to take my legs! You’re family, Mara! You’re supposed to save us!"
Vincent stepped beside Mara, resting a possessive, heavy hand on her shoulder. The heat of his touch seemed to burn through the thick cashmere.
"She is not your family anymore, Grant," Vincent said, his voice terrifyingly calm. "She is my fiancée. Which means every drop of blood you spilled from her mouth is debt owed directly to me."
Vincent signaled Cal with a subtle flick of two fingers.
Cal stepped forward, holding a manila folder and a notary seal. He slammed a four-page legal document onto a small table beside Grant.
"What is this?" Grant choked out.
"This is the immediate surrender of your thirty percent phantom shares in Vance Maritime," Vincent explained, stepping closer until his shadow completely engulfed the bound man. "Along with a full written confession detailing Evelyn’s wire fraud and embezzlement attempts over the last six months."
"If I sign that, the federal prosecutors will indict me!" Grant yelled, shaking violently in the chair. "I’ll go to prison for twenty years!"
"Sign it," Vincent whispered, leaning down until his lips were inches from Grant’s ear, "and you go to a federal prison where I ensure you survive your sentence. Refuse to sign it, and you don’t leave this basement alive tonight. Cal will feed what remains of you to the incinerators in Brooklyn."
Grant looked into Vincent’s eyes and saw no bluff, no hesitation, only the bottomless abyss of a man who had ended men for far less.
He began to weep uncontrollably. "Give me the pen. God, please... just give me the pen."
Cal untied Grant’s right hand. With trembling, spasming fingers, Grant scribbled his signature across all four pages, smearing his own blood across the bottom of the notary seal.
Mara watched the signature dry. The boy who had terrorized her grandfather’s final months was now nothing more than a sobbing wreck on a concrete floor. She turned toward Vincent, her chin held high despite the bruise on her cheek.
"Take me home," Mara said softly.
May you like
Vincent looked down at her, a rare flicker of admiration warming his ruthless eyes. "Your old home is gone, Mara. Tonight, you sleep in the Bellini estate. Tomorrow, we take your city back."
***
