Chapter 9 - The Ambush in the Mahogany Room
Arthur Sterling didn't flinch.
He slowly adjusted the cuffs of his grey suit jacket, leaned his silver-tipped cane against the side of the desk, and looked at his nephew with a quiet, icy expression.
"Sorrento?" Arthur murmured, his voice entirely smooth. "I haven't thought about that old Italian coastal town in years. What about it?"
"Eleanor left a video, Arthur," Julien said, turning the forty-inch wall monitor toward his uncle. "She recorded it eighteen hours before her car went over the pass. She explained everything about Aegis Holdings, the Geneva laundering routes, and the eight million dollars you forced her to move."
Arthur stared at the screen. The color didn't leave his face, but his jaw muscles tightened into two hard knots beneath his skin.
"Eleanor was an unstable girl, Julien," Arthur said softly, shaking his head with a look of theatrical pity. "She was overwhelmed by the pressure of joining our family. She made wild accusations because she was caught stealing from our charitable funds."
"And Vanessa Vance?" Julien asked, leaning forward over his desk. "Did she make wild accusations too when you paid her to handle my wife?"
Arthur took a deep breath, reaching into his vest pocket to pull out a silver cigar case. "Vanessa is a mercenary, Julien. I hired her to monitor Eleanor because I suspected your wife was selling corporate secrets to our Mediterranean competitors. Whatever Vanessa told you last night in her locked room was simply a desperate woman trying to save her own skin."
"I didn't say Vanessa spoke to me last night," Julien noted flatly.
Arthur froze, his fingers stopping on the silver clasp of his cigar case.
The silence in the room grew heavy, cold, and suffocating.
"You're very sharp, Julien," Arthur whispered, dropping the friendly uncle persona entirely. "You always were. Just like your father before he died in that convenient plane crash in ninety-eight."
Julien felt a sudden, searing rage roar through his chest, but he kept his body entirely still, his hands resting flat on the mahogany desk.
"My father's plane crash was your doing too?" Julien asked.
"Your father was a dreamer, Julien!" Arthur spat, his voice suddenly dropping its polite aristocratic tone, exposing the ruthless predator beneath. "He thought a global shipping enterprise could be run like a Sunday school charity! He didn't understand that to keep a thousand ships moving across dark oceans, you have to deal with dark people!"
Arthur leaned across the desk, his eyes burning with arrogance.
"You think you can destroy me with a seven-year-old video recorded by a dead girl?" Arthur sneered. "I own half the judges in Cook County. I hold sixty percent of the voting proxy on the Sterling board. By twelve o'clock today, I will have you declared mentally unfit, remove you as CEO, and take full legal guardianship of that little girl upstairs."
"You won't be doing any of that, Arthur," Julien said softly.
Julien tapped a key on his laptop.
The heavy mahogany side doors of the study slid open.
Four men in tactical black vests with bold yellow letters across their chests stepped into the room, their hands resting on holstered sidearms.
FBI.
Behind them walked Special Agent Miller, holding a federal arrest warrant signed thirty minutes prior by a United States District Judge.
"Arthur Sterling," Agent Miller announced clearly, his voice echoing in the mahogany room. "You are under arrest for federal racketeering, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit murder, and obstruction of justice."
Arthur’s face turned gray. He looked at Julien, then looked at the federal agents closing in around his chair.
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"You ruined your own family, Julien!" Arthur hissed as an agent pulled his arms behind his back, snapping steel handcuffs around his wrists. "You ruined everything we built!"
"No, Arthur," Julien said, standing up from his chair, watching his uncle being dragged toward the doors. "You built a house out of blood and lies. I'm just clearing the land for my daughter."
