Chapter 4 - The Cellar Confession
We crept down the narrow wooden stairs into the cellar, the air growing thick with the smell of damp earth, old iron, and stale cigarette smoke.
At the bottom of the stairs was a massive iron-reinforced door with a thick wire-mesh window. Through the mesh, a single overhead bulb illuminated a grim, windowless interrogation room.
Ethan Mercer was tied securely to a wooden chair in the center of the room, his face bruised, his expensive tuxedo jacket torn at the shoulder, and a thin line of blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. Standing over him, holding a heavy wrench, was a man I hadn't seen in five years.
Arthur Vance.
Marcus Vance’s younger brother—the man everyone thought had fled the country after the SEC raided their family’s failing hedge fund.
“You never were very smart, Ethan,” Arthur sneered, pacing slowly around the chair, slapping the heavy wrench against his palm with a dull, rhythmic thud. “You thought you could divorce Claire, marry a tech heiress, and inherit the Sterling-Mercer dynasty without paying your debts to the people who funded your initial startup capital.”
Ethan winced, straining against the ropes biting into his wrists. “I paid back every dime! I used my corporate dividends—”
“Corporate dividends?” Arthur laughed, a harsh, grating sound. “Your corporate dividends belong to Lane Global now. Or did you forget that your ex-wife quietly bought up your company’s controlling shares while you were busy planning your wedding?”
From my vantage point outside the wire-mesh door, I felt a jolt of shock.
Lane Global?
Julian had told me months ago that we were expanding my portfolio, but he hadn't told me that Ethan’s own firm had been quietly absorbed into the very holding company I nominally controlled.
Inside the room, Arthur leaned down close to Ethan’s ear, his voice dropping into a low, venomous hiss.
“The babies in that photograph, Ethan... they aren't just your daughters. They’re the primary beneficiaries of the Vance estate trust. Marcus set up that trust twenty years ago, and whoever controls those three children controls half the commercial real estate in Manhattan.”
Ethan’s eyes widened in sudden, horrifying realization. “That’s... that’s why you pushed me to marry her in college. That’s why you orchestrated the whole thing.”
“Oh, bingo, golden boy,” Arthur smiled, raising the wrench. “And now, you’re going to sign over your remaining power of attorney, and then we’re going to introduce you to a very permanent kind of retirement.”
I didn't wait for Julian.
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With a silent nod to my mentor, I raised the heavy steel-barreled taser, kicked the iron-reinforced door with the full force of my heel, and watched the lock shatter inward against the stone wall with a thunderous crash.
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