Chapter 5 - An Auditor’s Daughter on the Strip
At 3:30 AM, the private baccarat salon of the Bellagio was an icebox.
The six senior gaming directors and five forensic accountants who had spent four months assuring Damian that the buyout was flawless sat along the green-felt table in petrified silence.
Standing near the marble sideboard, dressed in a backless gold sequin gown with three rows of matched diamonds around her throat, was Camilla Laurent.
Her smile was dazzling, but her ice-blue eyes were fixed on the double doors with mounting, furious tension.
The heavy rosewood doors clicked open.
Damian Cross walked into the room.
He wore his bespoke charcoal suit without a tie, his cuffs unbuttoned, his presence carrying the absolute, undisputed authority of a sovereign who had just survived an ambush.
And walking beside him, wearing an elegant dark-wool business suit that Mrs. Gable—the penthouse housekeeper—had tailored for her at midnight, her dark hair swept up in a neat twist, the silver dice charm pinned over her heart, was Elena Vance.
In her hands, Elena carried the three-hundred-page acquisition prospectus, its pages covered in bold red ink.
Camilla’s champagne flute froze halfway to her lips.
Her aristocratic smile fractured into sharp, venomous disgust.
“Damian, what is the meaning of this?” Camilla asked, her voice tight with forced laughter. “Why is your VIP cocktail waitress standing at the head of our closing table? The European delegates are waiting for the digital transfer!”
Damian did not sit.
He walked to the center of the table, stopped before the Riviera’s chief executive, Arthur Pendelton, and tossed the red-marked prospectus onto the green felt with a concussive slap.
“The purchase price is no longer nine hundred and twenty million dollars, Arthur,” Damian said softly.
The entire salon went dead quiet.
Arthur Pendelton, an aging titan with silver hair and an eight-thousand-dollar suit, blinked in confusion. “Damian, we negotiated these valuation multiples for six months—”
“Elena Vance has found three hundred and eighty million dollars in undisclosed liabilities, environmental deficits, and stolen pension reserves in your footnotes, Arthur,” Damian interrupted, his amber eyes burning through the older man.
Elena stepped forward, her voice ringing clear and steady across the room:
“The revised purchase price is four hundred and sixty million dollars. The seller will immediately restore the forty-five million dollars stolen from the workers' pension trust under an independent escrow bond. The Curacao sub-licenses are voided, and the Riviera board will personally absorb all legal liabilities stemming from the Delaware grand jury.”
She looked at Arthur Pendelton with absolute, unyielding authority.
“And the closing deadline is not midnight. It is four o'clock this morning. If the Riviera board does not execute these revised terms by the fourth chime of the tower clock, the Cross Syndicate will publicly file this dossier with the United States Department of Justice and the Nevada Gaming Control Board.”
A collective, shuddering gasp rippled through the six gaming directors.
Arthur Pendelton looked down at the red ink, all the color draining from his face until he looked like a corpse in a tailored suit.
“Damian... you cannot do this! This will bankrupt our private equity fund!”
“Then you should have thought about your private equity fund before you hired Bradley Shaw to cut the brakes on Teresa Vance’s car four years ago, Arthur,” Damian whispered.
Pendelton froze. His bloodshot eyes darted toward Camilla Laurent.
Camilla backed away two paces, her gold sequins shivering, her hand flying to her diamond necklace.
“Damian! What does Teresa Vance have to do with this contract? That was an ancient industrial accident!”
Damian slowly turned his head toward his fiancée.
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“Teresa Vance was murdered because she found your family’s offshore accounts in Panama, Camilla,” Damian said, each word falling like an iron ingot onto the marble. “The forty million dollars Bradley Shaw wired out of Apex Global was deposited into a shell company registered under your maiden name.”
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