Chapter 5 - The Fall of Vance Dynamics
Across the city, in the penthouse suite of the Vance Dynamics headquarters, Odalys Cole was frantically throwing diamond jewelry, bearer bonds, and high-end couture into two Louis Vuitton duffel bags.
Her hands were shaking so hard she dropped an emerald tennis bracelet twice.
"Pick up! Pick up, Silas, you arrogant idiot!" she screamed into her encrypted cell phone, pressing it against her ear.
The line had been dead for forty-five minutes. Every news channel playing across the bank of wall-mounted screens was broadcasting the same catastrophic financial breaking news banner:
**VANCE DYNAMICS SHARES SUSPENDED: SEC LAUNCHES HISTORIC FRAUD PROBE. TRADING HALTED WORLDWIDE.**
Her personal phone buzzed. It wasn't Silas.
It was an alert from her private banking app in Switzerland. She glanced down, and her breath caught in her throat. Her checking account—where Silas had wired her three million dollars just that morning—displayed a balance of $0.00.
Below it, a new line item appeared: *WITHDRAWAL CODE: OSEI SYNDICATE — DEBT OF BLOOD.*
"No, no, no!" Odalys shrieked, throwing the phone across the plush white carpet. "That old man is a mechanic! He works in a junkyard! This is impossible!"
She zipped the bags, grabbed her mink coat, and ran toward the private express elevator that led directly to the underground executive garage. If she could reach the airstrip in Teterboro, her private charter to Dubai was fueled and waiting. Silas could rot in prison; she had enough diamonds in her bag to buy a new identity in the Emirates.
The elevator chimed. The bronze mirrored doors slid open.
Odalys stepped inside and slammed her keycard against the reader. "Come on, move!"
The elevator descended smoothly. Sixty floors. Fifty. Forty.
At the thirty-second floor, the elevator smoothly decelerated and came to a complete halt.
Odalys’s heart hammered against her ribs. "No! Keep going!"
The bronze doors slid open.
Standing in the dimly lit hallway of the empty, locked-down executive floor were three men dressed in pristine charcoal suits. In the center stood a man of seventy, whose eyes possessed the lethal stillness of a king cobra. He held an unlit cigar in one hand and a gold pocket watch in the other.
"Miss Cole," the man said smoothly. "My name is Christian. I am the executor of the Osei estate."
Odalys backed into the corner of the elevator, holding her designer handbag across her chest like a shield. "Stay back! I have private security! I will scream!"
"Your private security took a cash settlement of two million dollars each twenty minutes ago and are currently on flights to Lisbon," Christian replied with a polite, razor-thin smile. "And screaming in this building is entirely pointless. Mr. Marcus Osei purchased the deed to Vance Dynamics forty-two minutes ago through an auction held in the shadows of the Tokyo exchange."
"You can't do that!" she shrieked. "Silas is the majority shareholder!"
"Silas Vance pledged eighty-five percent of his stock as collateral against margin loans with three European banks," Christian explained calmly, stepping into the elevator. "Banks which, unfortunately for Mr. Vance, have been wholly owned subsidiaries of the Osei family since 1948."
Christian lifted a finger. The two men behind him stepped forward.
Odalys lunged toward the elevator phone, kicking wildly with her designer heels. "Don't touch me! I'm pregnant with Silas Vance's heir!"
One of the men caught her foot mid-air with effortless strength, twisting her around and snapping carbon-fiber zip-ties around her wrists before she could even inhale to scream again.
Christian leaned down, picking up the leather belt that was still looped through the rings of her coat—the very belt she had used on me two hours earlier. He held it up to the elevator light, examining the heavy brass buckle stained with a single speck of dried blood.
"A belt, Miss Cole?" Christian murmured, his tone devoid of anger, which made it infinitely more terrifying. "Against a woman carrying Marcus Osei’s first grandchild?"
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He shook his head slowly.
"You should have asked Silas to research his father-in-law's youth. Even the Russian Vor fled Brooklyn when Marcus walked the docks." Christian turned his back. "Take her to the warehouse. Marcus is already waiting."
