Chapter 5 - The Snake in the Glass Tower
While Dominic’s team prepared the legal and financial traps for the following evening, Julian Vance was growing increasingly desperate inside his glass fortress in Midtown Manhattan.
At 11:00 PM that night, Julian Vance stood in his forty-fourth-floor office, staring out at the gleaming grid of New York City below. He was a man in his late fifties, impeccably groomed in a five-thousand-dollar tailored suit, but his eyes were bloodshot and wild with rage.
"How did eight men fail to secure a mother and a child?!" Vance roared, slamming his crystal whiskey glass against his marble desk, shattering it into a hundred pieces.
Standing across from him was his chief security chief, a brute of a man named Kaelen.
"Dominic Romano’s estate was more heavily fortified than our intelligence indicated, sir," Kaelen stammered, stepping back from the flying glass. "And... Romano was already aware of the girl’s identity. He had her inside his personal vault within three minutes of our breach."
"Elena's daughter..." Vance sneered, his fingers digging into the edge of his desk. "For nine years I thought that traitorous bitch took those codes to her grave! And all this time, her brat was living three miles away in Brooklyn!"
"Sir, the board is getting nervous," Kaelen warned softly. "Rumors are spreading that Romano's legal teams are freezing our offshore clearing accounts in Switzerland. If the board finds out the ledger codes have been decrypted—"
"The board will do what I tell them to do!" Vance shrieked, his voice echoing off the glass walls. "We move the asset transfers up to tomorrow night! Once the funds are moved to the Dubai shell accounts, Romano can have the ledger for all I care! I will leave this city with three billion dollars and let the federal government burn Romano to the ground!"
"And the girl?" Kaelen asked. "Claire Marino?"
Vance’s face twisted into an ugly, cruel smile. "Romano thinks he’s protecting her by keeping her at his mansion. Send two men to monitor the estate. The moment Romano leaves his grounds tomorrow night to come to my tower... we take the baby."
May you like
Kaelen nodded. "Consider it done, sir."
Vance turned back to the window, watching the distant lights of the Brooklyn skyline, his heart filled with a toxic, desperate hatred. "You took Elena from me twenty years ago, Dominic," Vance whispered to the dark glass. "Tomorrow, I take everything else."
