Chapter 7 - The Viper's CagePanic is an emotion reserved for the weak. When you are standing on the edge of a cliff, you do not cry about the fall. You figure out how to build a parachute.
By noon the next day, I was sitting at the head of the mahogany table in my Manhattan boardroom. My legal team looked exhausted, surrounded by towers of financial documents and digital projections of the Mercer Trust’s corporate history.
"He’s right," my lead counsel, Marcus, said grimly, dragging a hand down his face. "Nathaniel Cross found a shadow clause. When Graham and Sienna forged the original transfer documents during your fake marriage, they nested a secondary reversion clause that tied a percentage of the Trust’s equity to a Cayman Island holding company owned by Richard Whitlock. We missed it during the asset seizure."
"I do not miss things, Marcus," I stated coldly, staring at the screen. "Richard Whitlock hid it. Which means Graham and Sienna knew about it."
"Cross is demanding five hundred million, Victoria. If we fight this in international court, he can file injunctions that will shut down our hotels in Paris, Rome, and London for years," Marcus warned. "We might have to pay him."
"I am not giving a parasite half a billion dollars of my hard-earned empire," I snapped, standing up. "If Graham and Sienna forged the original document, then the shadow clause is also a forgery. If I can prove Richard Whitlock ordered the forgery, the clause is rendered legally void, and Nathaniel Cross’s twenty-two percent stake evaporates into thin air."
"Graham won't talk," Marcus said. "He hates you."
"I know," I replied, grabbing my designer trench coat. "That’s why I’m not going to ask Graham."
Three hours later, the heavy, reinforced steel doors of the Danbury Federal Correctional Institution slammed shut behind me. The sterile, fluorescent-lit visitor's room smelled of bleach and despair—a stark contrast to the luxurious world I inhabited.
I sat at a stainless-steel table. A moment later, a guard escorted her in.
Sienna.
The woman who had slept in my bed, conspired with my husband, and tried to steal my life. She wore a faded, oversized khaki prison uniform. Her blonde hair, once perfectly styled in upscale salons, was stringy and flat. The arrogant, venomous mistress was gone, replaced by a hollowed-out shell of a woman who had realized too late that she was playing out of her league.
She sat down across from me, her hands cuffed to a chain around her waist. Her eyes burned with a mixture of raw hatred and desperate exhaustion.
"I never thought I'd see you here," Sienna sneered, her voice raspy. "Come to gloat, Victoria? Come to see the animal in the cage?"
"I don't have the time or the interest to gloat over a corpse, Sienna," I said, folding my hands neatly on the table. "I came to make a deal."
Sienna scoffed, leaning back as far as her chains would allow. "A deal? I’m doing twelve years because of you. I have nothing left for you to take."
"I don't want to take anything. I want to give you something," I said softly, leaning in. "Nathaniel Cross bought Richard Whitlock’s distressed debt. He’s trying to use a shadow clause you and Graham forged to seize my European assets. I know Richard orchestrated it. I need the proof."
Sienna’s eyes widened slightly. A cruel, bitter laugh escaped her lips. "Richard sold the debt? Of course he did. He let Graham and me take the fall while he kept his golden parachute."
"Give me the proof that Richard ordered the forgery," I demanded, staring directly into her sunken eyes. "If you do, my lawyers will file an appeal on your behalf. I will get you transferred from this maximum-security hellhole to a minimum-security camp in Connecticut. Yoga classes, real food, outdoor privileges. I can make it happen by Friday."
Sienna stopped laughing. The sheer desperation of her reality crashed over her. She stared at me, weighing the absolute hatred she had for me against the miserable, suffocating reality of her cell.
"Graham didn't keep the original drafts," Sienna whispered, leaning forward, her voice dropping to a paranoid hush. "Richard was too smart for that. He used a clean-up guy. A corporate fixer who made sure the digital footprint of the forgery vanished before the FBI raided Whitlock Capital."
May you like
"Who is the fixer?" I asked, my heart pounding a steady, rhythmic drumbeat of impending victory.
"His name is Dominic Reed," Sienna said, a dark smile touching her cracked lips. "But good luck finding him, Victoria. He’s a ghost. And he’s ten times more dangerous than Graham ever was."
Related Stories
