Chapter 5 - The Empire Strikes Back
While Emma was holding court on the seventy-second floor of the Willis Tower, forty miles away in a high-security corporate boardroom in Oak Brook, Illinois, a very different meeting was taking place.
The atmosphere inside the corporate headquarters of Apex Capital Holdings was suffocatingly tense.
At the head of a glass conference table sat Julian Vance—not related to Sterling’s partner, but a ruthless fifty-year-old venture capitalist whose firm managed over twelve billion dollars in distressed assets. He wore a six-thousand-dollar tailored Italian suit, his eyes cold and predatory as he stared at the wall-mounted television screen.
On the screen, a live news broadcast from WGN-TV was playing: "TWELVE-YEAR-OLD GIRL EXPOSES BILLION-DOLLAR MEDICAL DEBT FRAUD IN COOK COUNTY COURT."
Julian Vance picked up a heavy crystal whiskey glass and shattered it against the television screen.
The glass exploded, sending dark liquid dripping down the ruined display.
Sitting around the table were Richard Croft, Colin Mercer, and six senior corporate defense lawyers from New York, all sitting in absolute, terrified silence.
"A child?" Julian Vance roared, his voice shaking the glass walls of the boardroom. "A twelve-year-old girl in a public school hand-knitted sweater just blew open our entire Midwest debt portfolio on live television?!"
"Julian, listen to me," Croft stammered, pulling at his tie, sweat pouring down his neck. "It... it was a freak occurrence! The judge was biased! He’s an old-school consumer advocate—"
"Shut up, Croft!" Vance screamed, slamming both palms down onto the table. "Do you have any idea what happens if the Federal Trade Commission sees those metadata ledgers?! We have four hundred thousand medical accounts operating under that exact same algorithm across eleven states! If Sterling gets those files authenticated, our stock will collapse by seventy percent before the market opens on Monday!"
Colin Mercer leaned forward, his hands shaking. "Julian... David Sterling entered a pro bono appearance this afternoon. He’s assigned twenty senior associates to the Walker girl's case. They’re filing an emergency class-action motion tomorrow morning."
Julian Vance slowly sat down in his high-backed leather chair. He folded his hands together, his expression turning from explosive rage into a cold, calculated, murderous calmness.
"Sterling wants a war?" Vance whispered, his voice dripping with venom. "We will give him a war."
He turned to his chief legal officer.
"First," Vance ordered, "I want every media outlet in Chicago flooded with press releases about Grace Walker. Dig up her past, find every late bill, every missed tax payment, every personal flaw. I want her painted as a professional fraud artist who manipulated her own daughter to garner public sympathy."
"On it," the chief legal officer nodded.
"Second," Vance continued, leaning forward, "call our contacts at the Lincoln Park Homeowners Association. Grace Walker cleans houses for five of our high-net-worth investors. Tell those homeowners that if they don't terminate her housekeeping contracts immediately, Apex Capital will pull its commercial real estate investments from their development projects."
Richard Croft smiled wickedly. "That will strip her of every cent of income by tomorrow morning."
"And third," Vance said, his eyes narrowing into cold slits, "find out where that twelve-year-old girl goes to school. Find out who her friends are, who her teachers are, and what her father’s medical history was. I want every pressure point on that family squeezed until they beg us to accept a settlement."
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He looked around the table at his executive team.
"They think a little girl in a courtroom can destroy a ten-billion-dollar empire?" Vance sneered. "By Monday morning, Mrs. Grace Walker will be so broken, so destitute, and so disgraced that she will sign a non-disclosure agreement just to afford a bus ticket out of Illinois."
