Chapter 5 - The Severing of the Bond
I stood up slowly from the floor, my joints cracking in the quiet room.
I didn't look at Marcus. I walked over to the exam table where Clara was resting her head against a clean pillow, Nurse Martinez having returned with an intravenous pole and three transparent bags of albumin and concentrated immunoglobulin.
I reached out, my large, calloused thumb gently brushing a stray curl from the little girl’s damp forehead. Her skin was warm, but her breathing had already begun to ease as the antihistamines took hold.
"Marcus," I said, my voice dropping into a register that made my cousin take half a step backward toward the corridor.
"Yes, Ryan?"
"Call Julian Brooks," I said, turning to face him, my eyes empty of fear, empty of doubt, cold as the granite foundations of the city outside.
"Tell him to pull his maritime bond."
Marcus’s jaw dropped. "Ryan, are you insane?! That bond represents eighteen percent of our commercial litigation revenue! If Brooks pulls his capital, the board will call an emergency vote to strip you of your managing partnership before sunrise!"
"Let them call the vote," I replied flatly. "And Marcus?"
"What?"
"Call my mother."
Marcus pulled his phone from his breast pocket, his fingers shaking so violently he nearly dropped the device. "What do you want me to tell her?"
I reached down and picked up the folded piece of cream-colored executive stationery from the floor—the memorandum threatening Grace’s parents with bankruptcy and ruin.
I handed it to my cousin.
"Tell her to turn on the local news at eleven," I said, every word dropping like an iron weight into the silence. "Tell her that her son is holding a press conference on the steps of the Cook County Chancery Court at midnight. Tell her that if she isn't packed and out of the Astor Street penthouse before my car arrives... I will deliver the forensic audit of her charitable foundation directly to the Special Prosecutions Bureau before the courthouse doors unlock in the morning."
Marcus looked down at the paper in his hands.
His eyes tracked down the lines of my mother’s handwriting. As he read the words—the threats, the calculated cruelty, the systemic destruction of a mother and three infants—the color drained from his face until he looked like a drowned corpse in a four-thousand-dollar suit.
"Oh, Jesus, Ryan..." Marcus breathed, his voice cracking into a horrified whisper. "She told me... she told the entire family that Grace had taken a lover in Evanston. She told us Grace had terminated the pregnancy and vanished with an accountant."
"My mother lied to you, Marcus," I said, walking to the door, resting my hand on his shoulder, squeezing until the bone beneath the wool groaned under the pressure.
"She lied to you, she lied to me, and she used this firm as a weapon to starve my children in a basement in Humboldt Park."
I leaned in until my lips were two inches from his ear.
"Are you with the firm, Marcus? Or are you with the blood?"
Marcus looked at me. He looked past my shoulder at the little boy standing beside his mother, staring at him with the cold, unyielding gray eyes of the Vance dynasty.
May you like
Marcus reached into his pocket, pulled out his firm security badge—the gold-embossed keycard that granted unrestricted access to the master archives of Vance, Sterling & Mercer—and pressed it firmly into my palm.
"The executive server backups are in vault four, Ryan," Marcus whispered, his jaw setting into hard, unyielding steel. "I’ll have the emergency chancery injunctions drafted before you reach the front doors."
