Chapter 4 - The Family Portrait of Greed
Richard looked like a man who had just realized his parachute was filled with lead. His immaculate corporate persona was entirely unraveling, his hair slightly disheveled, his eyes wild with the frantic desperation of a predator who had just walked directly into a hunter’s snare.
“Keep your voice down, Richard,” I said, not even bothering to stand up. I simply looked up at him with a chilling, placid calm that unnerved him more than any shout could have. “This is a corporate boardroom, not a tavern. And you’re shouting in a building where every square inch of equity belongs to the estate you spent the last year trying to loot.”
Richard swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing violently. He glanced sideways at David Vance, then back down at me, struggling to regain his footing.
“You can’t just lock the accounts!” Richard hissed, leaning over the table, trying to intimidate me with his height. “I am the executive vice president of operations! Without my authorization, the entire supply chain grinds to a halt! Do you have any idea what the board—what our federal defense contractors—will do when they realize shipments are stalled? You’re destroying the company to satisfy some petty domestic vendetta against Jason!”
“Jason is currently wandering around a suburban shopping mall trying to figure out why his credit cards are rejected,” I replied smoothly, leaning back in my chair. “And as for the board... what board, Richard? The one you stacked with your college fraternity brothers and corporate cronies while I was grieving my father?”
I reached into my leather folio, pulled out a thick, bound document stamped with the seal of the Massachusetts State Attorney General’s Office, and tossed it onto the table between us. It slid across the dark wood and stopped right against Richard’s knuckles.
He stared down at the cover, his breath catching in his throat.
“What... what is this?” he whispered, his fingers twitching as if the paper were burning hot.
“That is an unredacted federal and state grand jury subpoena,” I said, my voice cutting through the silent room like a scalpel. “Covering wire fraud, securities manipulation, falsification of defense procurement logs, and systematic asset stripping. It names Jason as the blunt instrument, and it names you as the architect.”
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Richard staggered back half a step, his face draining of all color. “You... you went to federal prosecutors? Without consulting the board? Without an internal review? Sophia, you’re dragging the family name through the mud! If this goes public, Veloce Holdings will collapse into bankruptcy within twenty-four hours!”
“Let it collapse,” I said, standing up slowly from my chair, my height and posture commanding absolute silence in the room. “If the only way to purge the rot from my father’s company is to burn the whole structure to the ground, then hand me the matches. Because I would rather see every brick of this tower reduced to ash than let thieves like you and Jason profit off my family’s name.”
