Chapter 3 - The Traitor Revealed
Victor Vance—Roman’s chief legal counsel and minority shareholder—slowly swiveled the armchair around. He looked entirely too relaxed for a man sitting in the study of a billionaire whose life he had just tried to extinguish. Beside him on the mahogany desk sat Roman’s primary laptop and a stack of signed transfer documents.
“Victor,” Roman said, his voice dangerously low. The suppressed pistol remained locked dead center on Vance’s chest. “You’ve grown very comfortable in my house.”
“Your house, your rules, right?” Vance smiled, tapping ash onto a crystal saucer. “Except empires fall, Roman. And yours has been top-heavy for a very long time. The board agreed with me—long before tonight. You’ve grown soft. Soft on competition, soft on asset distribution.”
Nora stood just behind Roman in the doorway, shielding Maisie’s eyes with her hand. Her mind raced. Vance. The man who always smiled politely when he handed her the monthly payroll checks. The man who brought candy for Maisie during the Christmas galas.
“You locked a child in that shed, Victor,” Roman said, stepping further into the room. The air between them felt like charged glass.
“An unfortunate variable,” Vance replied smoothly, finally letting his smile fade. “The girl wandered off. But collateral damage is a specialty of yours, isn't it, Roman? Or have you forgotten what happened to the Vanguard shipping lanes in Marseilles three years ago?”
Roman’s jaw tightened. A muscle jumped in his cheek. “That was business.”
“And this is a hostile takeover,” Vance said, standing up smoothly and buttoning his jacket. “The security detail is currently tied up in the lower parking garage, sleeping off a very heavy dose of sedative in their coffee. The local police won’t answer calls from this sector for another forty minutes—I paid the dispatch captain a very healthy retainer last Tuesday. So, Roman, you can either sign these asset transfer papers right now, and let you, the housekeeper, and the brat walk out of here alive… or you can try to be a hero.”
Nora felt rage eclipse fear. She stepped out from behind Roman’s shoulder, her voice cutting through the silence of the study like broken glass.
“You think because you bought the police and drugged the guards that you’ve won?” Nora stepped forward, her eyes blazing. “You left a three-year-old child to burn to death in a wooden box. That’s not business, Mr. Vance. That’s cowardice.”
Vance laughed—a dry, patronizing sound. “And what are you going to do about it, Mrs. Ellis? Clean my floors when I take over?”
Before Vance could blink, Roman lunged forward, not with the gun, but with raw physical fury. He slammed Vance across the mahogany desk, scattering papers and the crystal saucer in a shower of shards. The pistol barrel pressed directly beneath Vance’s chin.
“You talk too much, Victor,” Roman whispered, his face inches from the lawyer’s terrified expression. “Where are the encryption keys for the offsite servers?”
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Vance choked, his hands clawing at Roman’s wrists. “You… you can’t touch me. The board has a dead-man’s switch. If I don’t check in by midnight, the entire portfolio goes public to the federal prosecutors.”
Roman didn't flinch. He pressed harder. “Let it burn.”
