Chapter 13: The Purge
Three days after Maya's birth, Julian sat at the head of the massive obsidian conference table on the top floor of Vanguard Tower. The panoramic windows offered a sweeping view of Manhattan, but the atmosphere inside the boardroom was suffocating.
The emergency board meeting had been called by Julian himself. Twelve of the most powerful executives and family shareholders sat around the table. Arthur and Eleanor sat directly across from Julian, trying to project an air of unbothered confidence, though Arthur’s hands were trembling slightly.
Julian didn't sit. He stood, buttoning his suit jacket with terrifying calm, and tossed a thick, encrypted flash drive onto the center of the table.
"What is the meaning of this, Julian?" Arthur demanded, feigning outrage. "Calling an emergency meeting when you should be on paternity leave is highly irregular."
"Irregular is paying a disgraced former employee ten thousand dollars to orchestrate a smear campaign against my wife at a charity event," Julian replied, his voice echoing sharply off the glass walls.
The boardroom erupted in shocked murmurs.
"That is a lie!" Arthur shouted, his face flushing deep red.
"I have the wire transfer records, Arthur. Routed through a shell company in the Caymans directly to Jimmy Vance," Julian said coldly. He pressed a button on a remote, and the large screen behind him illuminated, displaying the exact banking transactions. "But that is merely a personal grievance. The drive on the table contains something the board will find far more interesting."
Eleanor went rigid.
"It contains irrefutable evidence of Arthur and Eleanor Vanguard embezzling over forty million dollars from the company’s pension fund over the last decade, masking it as operational losses in our European sector," Julian announced.
The silence that followed was absolute, heavy as lead.
"You have two choices," Julian continued, resting his hands on the table and leaning forward to look Arthur dead in the eye. "You both resign from the board immediately, surrender all your voting shares to me, and sign over your properties in the Hamptons to reimburse the pension fund. You will then quietly retire to a country with no extradition treaty."
"And the second choice?" Eleanor whispered, her voice cracking.
"I hand this drive over to the Department of Justice, and you spend the rest of your lives in a federal penitentiary," Julian said softly. "You have sixty seconds to decide."
May you like
There was no debate. The realization that their reign was entirely over crashed down upon them. With shaking hands, Arthur reached for the resignation documents Julian’s legal counsel slid across the table.
With a few strokes of a pen, the toxic branch of the Vanguard tree was permanently severed.
