Chapter 8 - The Fall of the House of Miller
Friday morning, 8:00 a.m.
The morning sun rose over David’s sleek office building downtown, but inside his executive suite, there was no light.
David sat at his desk, staring at his computer monitor. He had been refreshing his email every thirty seconds since 6:00 a.m., waiting for Frank Mercer’s signal that Vance & Co.’s design files had been destroyed.
Nothing. No email, no text, no call.
"Come on, Frank... pick up!" David panicked, dialing the burner phone for the twentieth time, only to hear the automated message: The number you have called is no longer in service.
Suddenly, the heavy glass doors of his outer office shrieked open.
The sound of multiple heavy footsteps echoed across the carpeted reception area.
David jumped out of his chair as the door to his private office swung open.
Four uniformed officers from the Financial Crimes Division, accompanied by two armed detectives and a representative from the State Department of Revenue, walked into the room.
"David Miller?" the lead detective asked, pulling a gold badge from his jacket.
"W-What is this?!" David stuttered, backing away toward the floor-to-ceiling windows behind his desk. "You can't be in here! This is a private corporate office!"
"Not anymore, Mr. Miller," the Revenue officer announced, placing a bright yellow SEIZED BY THE STATE OF TEXAS sticker directly onto David’s glass desk. "Your corporate entity has been formally dissolved due to insolvency, tax evasion, and failure to post court-ordered child support bonds."
The lead detective stepped forward, unholstering a pair of steel cuffs.
"David Miller, you are under arrest for felony solicitation of corporate sabotage, criminal conspiracy, and witness tampering," the detective stated loudly.
"Sabotage?!" David screamed, his voice cracking into a high-pitched shriek. "I didn't do anything! It was Frank! Frank acted alone!"
"Mr. Mercer is currently sitting in a federal holding cell, Mr. Miller," the detective replied coldly. "And he just signed a full confession implicating you as the primary instigator. He gave us your recorded phone calls, your payment agreements, and the location of your burner phone."
"No! No! This is a setup! Emily set me up!" David yelled, thrashing wildly as two heavy officers grabbed his arms, forcing him down against his leather desk, slamming his face into the cold glass as the handcuffs snapped shut over his wrists.
As they dragged David through the glass lobby in handcuffs, his remaining three employees stood near the water cooler, holding their coffee mugs, watching their former boss weep like a child.
Outside on the street, two local news vans were waiting. Cameras flashed repeatedly as David was loaded into the back of a black police cruiser.
Standing across the street, sitting on a park bench under the shade of a maple tree, sat Beatrice Miller.
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Her fine silk dresses were gone, replaced by a rumpled coat. Her house had been served with a foreclosure notice an hour earlier, her car had been repossessed by the bank, and now she watched her only son being driven away to a county jail cell.
She dropped her head into her wrinkled hands, weeping bitterly onto the concrete sidewalk, realizing too late that the cruelty she and her son had sowed six years ago had finally returned to harvest everything they owned.
