Chapter 6 - The Council of War
By eight o'clock the following morning, the private study of the Mercer estate had been converted into an active litigation headquarters.
Four senior partners from Brooks, Sterling & Howe—the premier corporate defense firm in Ohio—sat around the walnut desk, their laptops connected to three separate portable servers while the floor was buried beneath stacks of newly printed land registry charts from the county recorder's office.
At the head of the table sat Sarah Sterling, a sharp-featured woman of fifty-five whose legal briefs had twice rewritten the commercial code of the state. She was reviewing the 2012 logbook through a pair of horn-rimmed reading glasses, her finger tracing Marcus Mercer's signature with an expression of intense, professional fascination.
"It’s airtight, Julian," Sarah said, tossing the file onto the desk with a clean, heavy thud. "The cross-collateralization clauses on page eighty-four are ironclad. Your father didn't just give Arthur Vance a lease; he gave him a primary master lien that overrides every subsequent mortgage Mercer Development issued to the New York banks. If we file this in federal court this morning, we can halt all trading on Mercer stock by noon."
"What’s the counter-move?" Julian asked, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows as he paced by the window.
"The board will claim the logbook is a forgery," Sarah replied, taking a sip of black coffee. "They’ll say Arthur Vance stole the ledger before he was laid off in 2015 and filled in the margins himself to create a basis for future blackmail. The chief legal officer for Mercer, Bradley Vance—no relation to David, ironically—is a knife-fighter. He’ll file an emergency injunction to seize the book as corporate property before we can verify the ink density."
"We can verify the ink within four hours at the Ohio State forensic lab," Hannah Brooks said, stepping into the room with a tray of breakfast sandwiches. "I’ve already spoken to the director. They have a secondary spectrometer that can date the iron-gall components in the ink down to the week it was laid on the paper."
Before Sarah could answer, the red light on Julian’s private desk terminal began to flash with a rapid, continuous pulse.
Julian pressed the speaker button. "Speak."
"Mr. Mercer," Marcus’s voice came through the line, tight with professional alarm. "There is a vehicle at the front gate. It is a corporate town car from the downtown office. Mr. Bradley Vance is inside, and he has brought two deputies from the sheriff's department with an emergency order for your appearance before the executive committee."
David Vance, who had been sitting in the corner of the room wearing a clean flannel shirt Marcus had found for him, stood up so quickly his chair scraped against the hardwood. "They’re here for the book."
"They're too late for the book, David," Julian said, his voice entirely calm as he walked over to his desk and picked up a small, identical silver thumb drive from his pocket. He handed it to Sarah Sterling. "Sarah, take the original ledger through the service entrance and get it to the state lab. Take Hannah with you. David and I will go downtown to meet the committee."
"Julian," Sarah warned, her hand freezing on his arm. "If you walk into that boardroom without the physical ledger, Bradley will use the deputies to hold you for corporate non-compliance. He has the backing of the entire Wall Street syndicate that funded the 2018 expansion."
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"Let him try," Julian said, a cold, elegant smile touching his lips as he looked out at the black corporate car idling by his stone pillars. "Bradley Vance has spent ten years thinking I care about the stock price of Mercer Development. He’s about to find out that the only thing I care about is the promise I made to an eight-year-old girl on a porch last night."
He turned to David. "Go upstairs and tell Nora we're going for a drive. Marcus will stay with her while we're at the tower. And David? Don't forget your work jacket. I want them to see exactly who’s going to be owning their chairs by dinner."
