Chapter 7 - The Shadow of the Board
While the south wing became a sanctuary, the higher floors of the Aldwych Hotel were descending into chaos.
At nine o'clock on Thursday morning, five members of the Vance Syndicate's executive board—men who managed the shipping lines, the union funds, and the real estate holdings—arrived at the hotel for an emergency meeting in the grand boardroom on the twelfth floor.
These were not street thugs; they were men in seventy-year-old suits, men who sat on bank boards and owned racehorses in Kentucky.
Leading them was Victor Sterling—a sixty-eight-year-old silver-haired man who had been Arthur Vance’s chief financial officer for thirty years.
Victor sat at the head of the long mahogany conference table, his gold-rimmed glasses resting on his nose as he read through a stack of legal documents that Soren’s attorneys had delivered an hour earlier.
The heavy double doors of the boardroom swung open.
Soren walked in alone, wearing a charcoal wool suit and carrying a single dark leather folder.
"Soren," Victor said, his voice deep and resonant like an old organ. "What is the meaning of this? The harbor terminals have been shut down for twelve hours. Three union presidents are calling my personal cell phone. And there are rumors that federal immigration lawyers are sitting in our private lounge."
Soren sat down at the opposite end of the thirty-foot mahogany table. He didn't open his folder.
"Desmond Cade is in the basement," Soren said flatly.
A sudden, sharp silence descended on the five board members.
Victor’s eyes narrowed behind his gold-rimmed glasses. "Desmond is our operations manager. If he has committed a financial infraction, he should be terminated and handed over to the auditors—"
"Desmond killed my father," Soren interrupted.
The room seemed to drop five degrees in temperature.
One of the board members—a broad-shouldered man named Marcus who controlled the concrete unions—leaned forward, his heavy hands resting on the table. "Soren... that’s a heavy accusation. Arthur died six years ago. We all grieved him. But Desmond was his right hand—"
"Desmond was running a human trafficking ring through our laundry facilities," Soren said, his voice dropping into a register that sounded like steel dragging across granite. "He was stealing millions from the shipping accounts and using undocumented hotel staff to cover the paper trail. When my father found the ledger six years ago, Desmond put a bullet in the back of his head outside the municipal building."
Soren pulled the ledger photo prints from his folder and slid them down the long polished surface of the table.
The pages slid across the mahogany, coming to a stop directly in front of Victor Sterling.
Victor didn't touch them. He looked down at the highlighted lines, his face completely unreadable.
"Who gave you this?" Victor asked softly.
"A cleaner," Soren said. "A woman who dragged herself through this hotel with a broken leg to bring it to me."
Victor looked up, his gold-rimmed glasses catching the harsh glare of the chandelier. "And what do you intend to do with this, Soren? If these ledgers become public, the syndicate’s shipping licenses will be revoked by the port authority. The union contracts will be voided. We will lose eighty million dollars in market value by Friday."
Soren leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table.
"I don't care about the eighty million dollars, Victor," Soren whispered.
"Then you are unfit to lead this family!" Marcus shouted, slamming his fist onto the table. "Your father built an empire! You're going to destroy it for a few illegal cleaners and an old grudge?!"
Soren’s eyes moved to Marcus.
The look in Soren’s gray eyes was so utterly empty, so devoid of hesitation or mercy, that Marcus’s mouth snapped shut.
"The shipping licenses will be restructured," Soren said smoothly. "The human trafficking operation ends today. Every man on this board who took a percentage of Desmond’s offshore accounts will surrender his shares to the family trust by five o'clock today."
May you like
He stood up, buttoning his suit jacket.
"If you refuse," Soren added, stopping at the door, "Leo will provide the federal prosecutor with the unredacted copies of the ledgers. You have six hours."
