Chapter 5 - The Financial Guillotine
By eight o'clock Friday morning, while the sun rose over the mist-shrouded hills of Los Angeles, a silent war of economic annihilation was unleashed from the thirty-fifth floor of the Sterling Global Logistics headquarters in downtown LA.
I sat behind my massive obsidian desk, a cup of untouched black coffee sitting beside three flat-screen monitors displaying live financial ledgers.
Beside me sat Julian, my Chief Financial Officer.
“Walk me through their liability exposure, Julian,” I ordered, keeping my eyes fixed on the numbers scrolling across the screens.
“It’s extensive, Thane,” Julian replied, clicking a pen. “For the last five years, Corrine and Sloan have lived entirely as financial satellites orbiting your personal accounts. Corrine’s four-bedroom villa in Pacific Palisades? Registered under Sterling Asset Management LLC, a shell company owned one hundred percent by you. Her Mercedes-Maybach? A corporate lease under your firm. Sloan’s loft in West Hollywood? Subsidized by your family trust.”
“What about their personal liquid holdings?”
“Corrine has eighty-four thousand dollars in a personal checking account at Chase,” Julian said. “However, six months ago, she signed a personal guarantor agreement for a two-million-dollar loan to fund Sloan’s failed luxury swimwear line, Sloan Collection LLC.”
I looked up from the monitors, my eyebrows narrowing. “Who issued that loan?”
“Sterling Private Bank,” Julian grinned wolfishly. “A subsidiary of your holding company. You are, quite literally, her primary creditor.”
A cold satisfaction washed over my chest. “Default the loan.”
Julian’s fingers flew across his keyboard. “On what grounds?”
“Failure to disclose material legal liabilities—namely, being incarcerated on five felony counts,” I said crisply. “Accelerate the debt. Demand full repayment of the two million dollars within twenty-four hours. When she fails to produce the funds, seize the Chase checking account, seize the inventory of the swimwear company, and file for an immediate emergency lien against all her personal effects.”
“Done,” Julian said, hitting the enter key with a sharp click. “And the villa in Pacific Palisades?”
“Call my property management team,” I said, standing up and walking over to the floor-to-ceiling glass window overlooking the city. “I want an eviction notice served to her staff by noon. I want her lockboxes drilled out, her designer wardrobe packed into cardboard boxes and placed in paid storage, and her Maybach towed to our corporate fleet garage.”
“What about the storage fees for her clothes?” Julian asked with a quiet chuckle.
“Bill it to her estate,” I said without turning around. “When she defaults on the storage fees in thirty days, let the facility auction off her Chanel bags to the highest bidder.”
At 10:00 AM, my personal line buzzed.
I picked up the receiver. “Speak.”
“Thane,” the frantic voice of Arthur Vance, our family’s longtime senior attorney, boomed through the speaker. “I just received a frantic call from the legal aid attorney assigned to your mother at the Twin Towers facility! She is claiming that her bank cards have been declined at the prison commissary, her house keys don't work, and her personal legal counsel has withdrawn!”
“Arthur,” I said smoothly, leaning back against my desk. “Are you calling me in an official capacity as her representative?”
Arthur paused on the line, the sound of his heavy breathing filling the receiver. He knew me. He had watched me turn Sterling Global into a multi-billion-dollar empire. He knew that when I adopted this specific tone of voice, mercy had ceased to exist.
“Thane...” Arthur sighed heavily. “She is your mother. She made a terrible, horrific mistake—a crime, frankly. But she is an sixty-year-old woman sitting in a high-security holding cell in a orange jumpsuit. She’s weeping, Thane. She says she hasn't eaten since last night.”
“She hit my pregnant wife, Arthur,” I replied, my voice dropping into a register so dark the air in the office seemed to drop ten degrees. “She called my unborn child a bastard while dragging Alora across the floor by her hair. She stood in my room while my sister smashed my safe with a hammer to steal my deeds.”
Silence fell on the line. Complete, absolute silence.
“If you attempt to represent her, Arthur,” I continued softly, “I will consider it an act of corporate treason against Sterling Global. I will terminate our legal retainer, initiate a full audit of your firm's billings for the last decade, and ensure you never practice law in this state again.”
Arthur swallowed loudly. I could hear the trembling paper in his hand.
“I... I understand, Mr. Sterling,” Arthur stammered, his posture instantly collapsing through the phone. “My firm will immediately decline any representation for Corrine or Sloan Sterling due to a severe conflict of interest.”
“Good,” I said, hanging up the receiver.
May you like
I looked out at the sunny California sky.
They thought they were stepping into my estate to claim my fortune. They were about to discover that without me, they were nothing more than ghosts walking through a world they could no longer afford to live in.
