Chapter 6 - The Pitiful Ambush
The Vance Corporation's stock took a catastrophic twenty-two percent dive within seventy-two hours of my formal withdrawal. The financial world was small, and the sudden, aggressive insulation of the logistics division sent shockwaves through Wall Street. The rumors of familial fraud and impending criminal charges began to leak into the high-society columns, turning the untouchable Eleanor Vance into the city's most radioactive topic.
I was leaving the corporate offices of my new independent firm late on a Friday evening, the shadow of the skyscrapers lengthening across the concrete plaza, when a frantic figure blocked my path to my vehicle.
"Preston! Wait! Please, you have to listen to me!"
It was Gabriela. The high-society socialite who had once looked down her nose at my wife was unrecognizable. Her expensive designer coat was stained at the hem, her makeup was smeared from crying, and her hair was a chaotic, wind-blown mess. She looked like a woman who had spent forty-eight hours staring into the abyss of her own financial execution.
I stopped three feet away, my face hardening into an expression of absolute, arctic indifference. Two of my private security detail instantly stepped between us, their hands resting near their holsters.
"Move aside, Gabriela," I said, my voice cutting through the evening chill like a scalpel. "You are violating the civil restraining order. If you take another step closer, my team will have you arrested on the spot."
"Preston, please!" she shrieked, dropping her designer leather handbag onto the dirty pavement as she fell to her knees, her hands clasped together in a pathetic gesture of supplication. "The bank seized the primary estate this morning! They’ve frozen Mother’s personal accounts because of the twelve-million-dollar audit! We don't even have enough money to pay the staff or the electricity bill! They're going to take the townhouses next!"
"Then I suggest you start looking for a smaller apartment, sister," I said, stepping around her. "I hear the suburbs are lovely this time of year."
"How can you be so cruel?" she wept, grabbing at the hem of my trousers, though my security detail quickly pulled her back, forcing her away from me. "We are your blood! Mother is sixty-five years old! She can't survive in a regular apartment! She's sick with stress! If you press those criminal charges, she will go to prison!"
I stopped and slowly turned back to look at her. The sight of her kneeling on the cold concrete didn't give me a single ounce of satisfaction; it only filled me with a deep, profound disgust for how small she truly was when stripped of her stolen wealth.
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"When you locked Esther in that service kitchen for six months, Gabriela, did you think about her health?" I asked, my voice terrifyingly calm. "Did you think about how she survived on a narrow mattress with nothing but a cheap fan while you threw parties upstairs? You called her a nobody. You told her she should be grateful for your crumbs. Well, now you get to experience exactly what it feels like to have nothing. Tell Eleanor that if she wants to avoid prison, she has exactly forty-eight hours to sign over her remaining shares of the real estate division to my firm at bankruptcy value. That is the only mercy you will ever receive from me."
Without waiting for her to answer, I stepped into the back of my vehicle. The heavy door closed with a solid, definitive thud, cutting off the sound of her desperate, pathetic wailing as we pulled out into the neon-lit city streets.
