Chapter 7 - Blood on the Shattered CrystalThe side doors of the boardroom opened with a heavy mechanical groan.
Two armed guards dragged Victoria Sterling into the room.
Her white mink stole was gone, replaced by a coarse gray holding blanket. Her couture gown was torn at the hem, her diamond earrings missing, her mascara smeared across her pale face from hours of weeping in the damp Pier 4 cellar.
When she saw her father surrounded by forty armed men with their weapons drawn, a shrill, hysterical shriek tore from her throat.
“Daddy! They know! They found the 2001 files! They found Arthur’s watch!”
Charles Sterling crumpled to his knees on the parquet floor, his hands covering his face in broken, hopeless agony.
Nathaniel rose from the head of the table.
He towered over the room, six-foot-three of absolute, undisputed authority.
He looked down at Victoria, who was shivering against the floorboards.
“You ordered my sister to pick up shattered glass with her bare fingers while she carried her child, Victoria,” Nathaniel whispered, his voice vibrating with lethal stillness. “You told her that if she stood before midnight, you would have the harbor police raid her family's home.”
Victoria looked up, sobbing hysterically.
“Nathaniel, please! Have mercy! I didn't know she was Julianna! I thought she was just an archivist!”
“In this house, Victoria,” Nathaniel replied, his words echoing across the silent boardroom, “anyone who works under my roof is under my shield. But you didn't just mistreat an employee. You tried to crush the daughter of Arthur Vance.”
He looked at Gideon.
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“Deliver Charles and Victoria Sterling directly to Assistant United States Attorney Marcus Vance at the federal courthouse. Every dock, every warehouse, and every bank account bearing the Sterling name in this state is seized under the authority of the Vance Maritime Trust.”
Victoria screamed, clawing at the floor as the guards hauled her backward down the corridor, her cries echoing through the building until the heavy double doors clicked shut forever.
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