Chapter 7 - The Tower of Glass
The executive boardroom on the forty-fifth floor of the Mercer Tower in downtown Columbus looked like a temple built to honor the concept of human greed. The walls were finished in polished black granite, the massive conference table was a single slab of smoked glass that cost more than a Cedar Ridge house, and the windows offered a three-hundred-60-degree view of an Ohio landscape that was currently disappearing under four inches of white powder.
Twelve members of the executive committee sat around the table, their faces grim, their phones buzzing with continuous alerts from the New York exchanges. At the center of the table stood Bradley Vance, the Chief Legal Officer—a man with hair like silver wire and a suit that looked like it had been painted onto his thin frame by an expensive tailor.
The double doors swung open, and Julian Mercer walked into the room, followed by David Vance.
The room fell instantly quiet.
"Julian," Bradley Vance said, his voice carrying the smooth, professional sharpness of a surgical blade. "Thank you for joining us. We were beginning to think the weather had kept you in Blacklick. Who is your guest?"
"This is David Vance, Bradley," Julian said, walking down the length of the glass table but remaining standing. He didn't take his usual seat at the head of the room. "He is the sole owner of the land beneath your feet, as well as the land beneath forty percent of our residential portfolio."
Several of the directors chuckled—a short, nervous sound that died out instantly when they noticed Julian wasn't smiling.
"Julian, let's not play games," Bradley said, sighing as he opened a thick leather file. "We received a very disturbing report from the Cedar Ridge property manager this morning. It seems you interfered in a domestic police matter last night, removed a child from a tenant dwelling, and threatened our leasing office with an illegal eviction freeze. The board is currently considering a formal motion of censure against you for corporate misconduct."
"The board can consider whatever it likes, Bradley," Julian said, leaning his hands flat against the smoked glass table. "But before you call for a vote, I suggest you look at the screen behind you."
Julian reached into his pocket, took out his phone, and tapped the screen once.
The massive digital display at the end of the boardroom flickered to life, revealing a high-definition scan of page eighty-four of the 2012 logbook. The cursive script of Marcus Mercer looked huge, dark, and undeniable against the black granite wall.
"That is a forgery," Bradley Vance said, his voice not rising by a single decibel, though his left hand gripped his gold pen until his knuckles turned yellow. "Marcus Mercer’s personal records were fully audited during the 2015 transition. No such land tenure agreement exists in the corporate repository."
"It didn't exist in your repository because my father knew you were a thief, Bradley," Julian said, his voice dropping into that quiet, concussive register that filled the large room like a bell. "He knew that if he left this ledger in the office safe, you would have shredded it before his funeral. He left it in the hands of the one man he knew wouldn't sell it to the private equity firms: his surveyor, Arthur Vance."
David Vance stepped forward, his heavy work boots leaving twin spots of melted snow on the pristine white wool rug that lay beneath the glass table. He reached into his pocket and dropped his father's old, bent brass surveying compass onto the center of the table.
"My dad spent forty years mapping the state of Ohio for this company, gentlemen," David said, looking across the table at the twelve executives with a look that made three of them shift their eyes. "He didn't know how to write a corporate contract, but he knew how to measure a boundary line down to the sixteenth of an inch. And according to his notes, this tower is sitting six feet inside the eastern limit of the Vance family land title."
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He leaned down until his face was twelve inches from Bradley Vance’s silver hair.
"Which means, Mr. Lawyer, that if we don't have a signed settlement by noon, I’m going to hire a fence company from South Columbus to build a eight-foot chain-link wall right through your reception desk."
