Chapter 9 - Turning the Empire Inside Out
By Monday morning, the snow had stopped, leaving the city frozen in a sharp, crystalline silence. The executive offices of Vanguard Pharmaceuticals on Wacker Drive were usually quiet at 9:00 a.m., but today, the entire top floor was locked down from the inside.
Six of Lawson Mercer’s top enforcers stood by the elevator bank, their long black coats open, their hands resting visibly near their belts.
Inside the primary boardroom, the chief executive officer, a man named Arthur Vance, sat at the end of a long glass table, his hands shaking so violently he could barely hold his gold fountain pen. Standing behind him was Prescott Hale, holding a laptop that displayed the live banking feeds from Vanguard’s primary offshore holdings.
"You have two choices, Mr. Vance," Lawson Mercer said, sitting in the leather chair across from him, his boots resting casually on the edge of the expensive glass table. He looked clean, shaved, and entirely restored to his former, lethal elegance. "You can sign the complete transfer of the pediatric research patents to the Salazar-Dunn Medical Foundation by 9:30 a.m., or my men will release the clinical logs from your Zurich facility to the federal district attorney’s office. Along with the personal bank records of Dr. Yates."
"This is extortion," Vance choked out, his eyes darting toward the security doors. "The police—"
"The police won't help a man who poisons five-year-old children for a stock dividend, Arthur," Lawson said smoothly, leaning forward until his shadow fell across the legal documents. "The chief of police owes his seat to my family’s winter fund. The district judge who signed your corporate tax exemptions spent last weekend on my yacht. You don't have a phone call to make. You have a pen to use."
May you like
Vance looked at the documents, then at the cold, unyielding gray eyes of the man across from him. He realized, with a sudden, freezing certainty, that Lawson Mercer wasn't just defending his territory anymore. He was defending his blood.
He grabbed the pen and signed.
