Chapter 8 - The Serpent in Silk
Back in Los Angeles, the Vance Real Estate Empire was cannibalizing itself in an attempt to survive the tsunami of public outrage.
Charles Vance, the seventy-year-old family patriarch who had built the company from a two-man construction outfit into a multi-billion-dollar empire, returned from London on his private jet.
He did not go to the federal courthouse to bail out his younger son Christian.
Instead, he summoned the best criminal defense attorneys in California to his penthouse office on the top floor of the Vance Tower in Century City.
Christian Vance, released on a twenty-million-dollar cash bond posted by his mother against the family’s offshore accounts, sat in a leather armchair with a black eye and bruised knuckles from his night in detention.
Christian looked like a shell of the golden boy who had stood at the altar seventy-two hours earlier; his designer suit was rumpled, his hair unwashed, his hands shaking around a glass of neat bourbon.
The heavy mahogany doors swung open, and Charles Vance entered, his cold blue eyes locking onto his youngest son with pure, lethal disappointment.
Charles walked across the plush carpet, didn't say a word, and slapped Christian across the face with such brutal force that the young man fell sideways out of the chair, spilling the bourbon across the wool rug.
"You idiot," Charles said, his voice quiet, gravelly, and terrifyingly cold.
"You absolute, incompetent moron."
"Father, please!" Christian gasped, scrambling to his feet while clutching his swollen cheek.
"I didn't know about the fire! I swear on my life, Juliette told me Caroline had died of an accidental overdose! She told me the probate was clean!"
"I don't give a damn about your dead sister-in-law, Christian!" Charles roared, slamming his walking stick down onto the glass coffee table, shattering the edge.
"I care about the six hundred million dollars in municipal development bonds that the City of Los Angeles just canceled because of your federal fraud charges!"
"Our stock fell thirty-four percent in seventy-two hours!"
"The banks are calling in the construction loans on the Point Dume marina project!"
"And to make matters worse, your brother Marcus has the original ledger books from the Mercer family trust."
Christian stared at his father, his eyes widening with renewed terror.
"Marcus? But Marcus has been an outcast for three years! He has no standing in the firm!"
"Marcus has the truth, you pathetic fool," Charles hissed, leaning down until his face was inches from Christian’s nose.
"And right now, the entire world wants to listen to the discarded son and the burned heiress."
"Arthur Mercer’s original will leaves everything to Caroline, and Marcus just filed a six-hundred-million-dollar civil racketeering lawsuit against this company for conspiring to conceal her abduction."
"If that suit goes to trial, every shell company I’ve built over the last forty years will be opened by the IRS."
Christian began to tremble, realizing for the first time that his father wasn't angry about the moral horror of the crime; he was furious that they had been caught.
"What do we do, Father?" Christian pleaded, his voice breaking like a frightened child's.
"Juliette's bail hearing is tomorrow morning. If she doesn't get out, her attorney says she’s going to make a deal with the federal prosecutors."
"She’s threatening to testify that I knew about the payments to Saint Jude's!"
Charles Vance straightened his posture, adjusted his silk cuffs, and walked over to the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the sprawling lights of Los Angeles.
"Juliette Mercer has outlived her usefulness to this family," Charles said with cold, calculating detachment.
"She was supposed to deliver the Point Dume coastal parcels into our development trust upon the consummation of the marriage."
"The marriage was never legally recorded, the deeds are locked under a federal lis pendens, and she is a toxic liability that will drag the Vance name into the gutter."
"Tell her high-priced defense counsel that our firm will no longer cover her legal retainer."
"Cut off her funds, revoke the luxury apartment in West Hollywood, and let her rot in the county jail."
Christian swallowed hard, feeling the cold wind of his father’s ruthlessness turn toward him.
"And Caroline?" Christian asked quietly. "What do we do about Caroline?"
Charles turned back to face his son, his expression completely blank, as smooth and unreadable as carved granite.
"Caroline Mercer thinks she has won because she humiliated us in a church and seized a few ledgers," Charles murmured.
"She forgets that Bel Air is not ruled by courtroom theatrics. It is ruled by debt, leverage, and power."
"She may own the land on Point Dume, but she has not paid the back property taxes, the commercial liens, or the multi-million-dollar cleanup bonds we placed on the estate through the city council."
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"Tomorrow morning, I will personally attend Juliette's bail hearing."
"Not to save that miserable girl, but to offer the district attorney a trade that will leave Caroline with nothing but her ashes and her scars."
