Chapter 11 - The Leverage
Marcus held up the manila folder, shaking it slightly as the fluorescent hallway lights caught the golden seal of Vance Global stamped across the tab.
“You think you’re the only victim of my dear cousin’s cold-blooded games?” Marcus hissed, his voice dropping into an erratic, desperate cadence. “Charles thinks he’s untouchable. He thinks he can destroy my life, strip my shares, and walk away to his dairy farm with his saintly mother. But he missed one crucial piece of paper. A document your father signed six months ago before he lost his mind to bad real estate.”
Stephanie pressed her back flat against the bare drywall of the empty closet, her chest heaving as she stared at the folder.
“I don’t care about my father’s papers,” Stephanie stammered, her voice shaking violently. “I just want out of here. Let me leave.”
“Oh, you’re not leaving, Stephanie,” Marcus smiled, a cold, predatory expression twisting his features. “Not yet. Because this document proves that your father illegally transferred three million dollars of Vance subsidiary funds into your personal overseas account to pay for your wedding expenses. Which means you are legally an accessory to corporate embezzlement.”
The blood drained entirely from Stephanie’s face, leaving her skin paper-white.
“That’s... that’s a lie,” she whispered, though the memory of her father’s hushed phone calls late at night in his study flashed suddenly behind her eyes. “My dad said the wedding was fully funded by his investments.”
“Your dad lied to keep you living in a fairy tale,” Marcus barked, tossing the manila folder onto the bare concrete floor right between them. The pages spilled out, revealing bank statements bearing her name, routing numbers to Swiss accounts, and her own digital signature authorizing the transfers. “Charles already has copies of these. He knows you took the money. He just hasn’t handed them to the federal prosecutor yet because he was saving it for the grand finale.”
Marcus took another step forward, closing the remaining space between them until Stephanie could smell the stale whiskey and cheap cologne on his trench coat.
“So here is how it’s going to work, little bride,” Marcus whispered, grabbing her wrist in a tight, bruising grip. “You are going to get on your phone—oh wait, you don’t have one, do you? You’re going to use my burner phone, call Charles, and tell him that if he doesn’t sign over fifty percent of his private tech subsidiaries to me by midnight, I hand these embezzlement papers directly to the FBI with your name at the top of the indictment list.”
Stephanie stared down at her bruised wrist, then up into Marcus’s unhinged eyes. The trap had closed completely, not just Charles’s trap, but a much darker, more dangerous cage built by a desperate man with nothing left to lose.
May you like
Before she could form a single word of refusal, a heavy thud echoed from the front hallway, followed by the sound of the smart lock overriding and clicking open.
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