Chapter 11 - The Fall of the Mercer HouseBy Monday morning, the news of the cathedral spectacle had sent shockwaves through North American financial markets.
Headline banners scrolled continuously across CNBC and Bloomberg:
DELUCA SHIPPING SHARES COLLAPSE 40% FOLLOWING EMBEZZLEMENT ARRESTS
VALE GLOBAL EXECUTES HOSTILE TAKEOVER OF SUBSIDIARY ASSETS
SECRET HEIR ELENA VALE ASSUMES CONTROL OF BOARD
I sat at the head of the dark mahogany conference table on the sixty-fifth floor of the Vale Tower in downtown Chicago. Gone was the modest, soft-spoken woman who had quietly taken care of Victor DeLuca in his final months. I wore a tailored midnight-blue suit, my dark hair pulled back into a sleek, flawless bun.
Beside me sat Arthur Sterling, reviewing a live dossier on his tablet.
"The Mercer family's remaining assets are collapsing like a house of cards, Elena," Sterling reported smoothly. "After Chloe was removed from the penthouse, we triggered an immediate audit of Mercer Financial Services—the boutique brokerage firm run by Jessica’s father, Richard Mercer."
I took a sip of black tea. "What did you find?"
"Predictably, Richard Mercer was using his daughter’s connection to Dominic to secure fraudulent lines of credit," Sterling said, sliding a document across the table. "He pledged non-existent DeLuca stock as collateral for a forty-million-dollar expansion loan. When our asset freeze hit Dominic on Friday, the lending bank margin-called Richard instantly."
I looked at the document. "And Richard can't pay."
"Not even ten percent of it," Sterling replied with a faint smile. "By noon today, the SEC will suspend his brokerage license. By three o'clock, the bank will seize his suburban estate in Forest Glen."
The door to the boardroom opened, and my father walked in, carrying a folder stamped TOP SECRET — VALE FORENSICS.
"It wasn't just Jessica and Dominic acting alone, Elena," Charles Vale said, setting the folder down in front of me. "Our cyber-forensics team finished decrypting the rest of the files from Victor’s USB drive last night."
I opened the folder. Inside were encrypted email chains between Dominic DeLuca and an external party—a man whose name made my blood run cold.
Julian Vance.
May you like
The CEO of Apex Logistics—Vale Global’s fiercest commercial rival in international shipping.
"Dominic wasn't just stealing money to fund his affair with Jessica," I murmured, reading the emails. "He was selling Vale Global’s private Atlantic shipping routes to Julian Vance."
