Chapter 3 - The Cold Steel on Pier FourJulian Bell's knees gave out.
The venture capitalist hit the wet timber boards with a dull slap, his trousers soaking up the greasy seawater pooling around the cleats, his hands splayed out in naked supplication.
"Matteo... Don Matteo, listen to reason!" Julian gasped, his manicured fingers clawing at the boards. "The transatlantic cup syndicate raised one hundred and twenty million dollars in private equity bonds! The race departs for Cowes on Tuesday! If the harbor stays locked down, the underwriters in London will declare immediate technical default!"
Matteo didn't look down at the kneeling man.
He reached his right arm behind him.
Maeve stepped up beside his hip, the oversized charcoal coat wrapping her like an empress's mantle, her amber eyes cool and analytical as she pulled a damp, carbon-lined drafting binder from the inner pocket of her smock.
"Page forty-eight, Matteo," Maeve said, her voice clear and level against the wind. "The underwriting bonds were not funded with private equity. Julian borrowed eighty million dollars from the South Boston loan crews using forged drydock receipts, pledging my father’s hydrofoil patent as his primary collateral."
Julian’s face went the color of curdled milk.
The entire dock turned dead silent.
Maeve turned her piercing gaze upon the trembling financier.
"You had your corporate clerks submit a fabricated patent assignment to the maritime registry three weeks ago, Julian," she said with razor-sharp precision. "Claiming that my father had signed away his hydrofoil rights forty-eight hours before his heart failure. You brought Victoria here tonight to stage an altercation, deliberately baiting an incident so the security team would confiscate my work binder and destroy the original graphite calculations before the launch."
She stepped to the edge of the gangway, looking down at the heavy steel shears lying in the mud.
"Victoria cut my smock because she knew the master patent certificate was folded inside the left interior breast pocket."
A murderous, concussive murmur broke out among the sixty industrial tycoons lining the pavilion.
Arthur Sterling, Victoria’s father—a sixty-two-year-old steel magnate who had made two hundred million dollars selling armor plating to the naval shipyards—stepped forward, his face mottled with purple rage.
"Julian," Arthur bellowed, his voice shaking with terror and fury. "Did you pledge the Sterling drydock credit facility to an unverified patent assignment?"
Julian frantically scrambled backward on his hands and knees, splashing dirty bilge water over his dinner suit. "Arthur, no! The assignment was stamped by the regional registrar! The girl was a nobody working for hourly wages—she had no legal fund to challenge our filings!"
"She doesn't need a legal fund, Julian," Matteo whispered, stepping between the ruined financier and the pavilion doors. "She has my navy."
He looked at Commissioner Vance.
"Commissioner."
"Yes, Don Matteo."
"Board Julian Bell’s corporate cruiser moored at Slip Twelve. Seize his servers, his private ledgers, and every digital token in his safe. If his accountants reach for a power cord, shoot them through the hand."
He looked down at Julian, who was shaking violently in the freezing rain.
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"And take Mr. Bell down to the lower holding vaults beneath Pier Four. Put him in the damp locker where they store the bilge pumps. Let him sit in salt water until the federal prosecutors from the maritime fraud division arrive with his arrest warrants."
Julian screamed, thrashing wildly as four tactical operators grabbed him by the arms, dragging his polished shoes across the splintered mahogany, his frantic pleas swallowed by the scream of the harbor wind until the heavy steel doors of the security shed slammed shut forever.
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