Chapter 4 - The Fall of the Empress
"Get your hands off me!" Eleanor shrieked as the two police officers walked past the silent board members and approached the head of the table. "Do you know who I am?! I am the Vice-Chairman of Vance Global!"
"You were the Vice-Chairman, Eleanor," Ethan corrected, his tone devoid of any emotion. "The board will now vote on your immediate termination for cause, effective this exact second."
He looked around the long table. The twelve directors, who had spent the last year cowering under Eleanor's tyrannical rule, looked at the forensic evidence flashing on the wall, then at the police officers, and finally at Ethan.
One by one, every single hand around the table rose into the air.
"The motion carries unanimously," Arthur Harrison declared, marking a legal notepad.
Victoria Sterling stood up, her expensive leather handbag slipping from her fingers and dropping onto the floor. "Ethan... you can't do this. The Sterling family controls thirty percent of your short-term credit notes! If you break the merger agreement, we will call in the debt tomorrow morning! Vance Global will be forced into restructuring!"
Maya, who had been sitting quietly in the central leather chair, looked up at Victoria. She saw the cold, desperate arrogance in the heiress's eyes—the same arrogance Eleanor had displayed in her small kitchen three hours ago.
Maya reached into her faded canvas bag, pulled out the thick leather folder Ethan had handed her on the helicopter, and placed it firmly on the glass table.
"You won't call in the notes, Miss Sterling," Maya said, her voice clear, steady, and loud enough to command the entire room.
Victoria sneered at her. "And what would a diner waitress know about credit notes?"
"I know how to read ledgers," Maya replied quietly. "My uncle ran a small trucking business in Vermont for twenty years. When he got sick, I did his books. And for the last two hours on that helicopter, I read the audit reports for Sterling Enterprise."
She opened the folder, pointing to a series of red-highlighted financial transactions.
"Your father didn't come here to save Vance Global," Maya explained, looking straight into Mr. Sterling’s panicked eyes. "Sterling Enterprise has been insolvent for six months. You hid twelve million dollars in unrecorded liabilities in an offshore entity in the Cayman Islands. You needed this merger so you could use Ethan’s liquid reserves to pay off your Swiss creditors before the quarter ended."
Mr. Sterling gasped, sinking back into his chair, his face turning gray. "How... where did you get those numbers?"
"My husband gave them to me," Maya said, a gentle, proud smile touching her lips as she looked up at Ethan. "Because unlike your family, Ethan actually trusts his wife."
Ethan looked down at Maya, his gray eyes shining with an overwhelming mixture of love and pride. He turned back to the room.
"Officers," Ethan said, gesturing toward his mother. "Take her."
Eleanor gasped as the cold steel handcuffs clicked around her wrists. "Ethan! I did this for you! I built this empire for you! You are throwing away your own blood for an uneducated nobody!"
Ethan stepped right up to his mother, his face inches from hers. "She isn't a nobody, Eleanor. She’s the woman who kept my child safe while you were spending millions trying to destroy us. You didn't build an empire. You built a prison. And today, I’m burning it down."
The police led Eleanor Vance out of the boardroom, her heels clicking loudly against the polished marble floor until the frosted steel doors slammed shut behind her, cutting off her hysterical screaming forever.
The room remained dead silent.
Victoria Sterling grabbed her father by the arm, dragging the broken, terrified man toward the private side exit without saying another word.
May you like
Ethan walked over to the head of the table, picked up the gavel his mother had been holding, and set it down in front of Maya.
"Gentlemen," Ethan said to the remaining board members, who were sitting rigid in their seats. "The meeting is adjourned. My wife and I have a family dinner to attend."
