Chapter 11 - The Eviction Notice
"Ethan, do something! Do something!" Claire was hyperventilating, her fingernails digging into my forearm through my shirt sleeves, her eyes wild with an absolute, primal panic. "She has judges! I told you! I told you she would take them!"
"She will take nothing," I said, my voice dropping into a cold, lethal calm. The panic in Claire’s eyes had stripped away any lingering hesitation in my soul. I was no longer the boy who tried to keep the peace between his mother and his wife.
I was the head of Whitmore Industries, and an attack on my sons was an act of war.
"Marcus," I said into the phone. "Call William Vance at Vance & Sterling. Tell him I need the entire senior litigation team at the Daley Center in thirty minutes. Every partner. Every associate."
"William Vance is Arthur Sterling's brother, Ethan," Marcus noted. "They share the family firm."
"Then tell William that if he wins this for me, Whitmore Industries will retain his firm exclusively for the next twenty years on a twenty-million-dollar annual retainer. If he refuses, or if Arthur Sterling speaks a single word in that courtroom, I will pull all Whitmore corporate accounts from their firm by three o'clock, and they will be bankrupt by Monday."
"Understood," Marcus replied. "I'll have William there in twenty minutes."
"Next," I ordered, grabbing Claire’s purse from the floor and steering her toward the private elevator. "Send a security detail to St. Jude’s Elementary immediately. Four men. Discreet. Nobody enters that school, and nobody touches those boys. If my mother’s private drivers or lawyers even cross the street near that playground, have them detained for trespassing."
"Already dispatched," Marcus said. "Two black Suburbans are parked outside the school gates right now."
We took the elevator down to the basement garage, where Thomas had the Maybach running with the doors open.
Claire was trembling so violently that her teeth were clicking together. I pulled her against my side as we slid into the rear seat, not caring if she pushed me away. This time, she didn't. She clung to my lapel, her knuckles white, her forehead pressed against my collarbone as if I were the only solid thing in a world collapsing around her.
"She can't do this, Ethan," she whispered, her voice ragged with terror. "I'm their mother. I've raised them. I've never abused them. We don't have money, but they have food, they have clothes—"
"Listen to me, Claire," I said, cupping her face with both hands, forcing her to look into my eyes. Her skin was freezing, her hazel eyes swimming with tears. "Look at me."
She looked at me.
"Margaret Whitmore will never touch our sons. I swear this on my father’s grave. I will burn the entire Whitmore family fortune to ash before I let her take a single hair from their heads. Do you hear me?"
She swallowed hard, nodding once, a tiny spark of trust flickering in her terrified gaze.
My phone rang again. This time it was an unknown Chicago number.
I answered it. "Whitmore."
"Is this Claire Morgan?" a coarse, aggressive voice demanded.
"This is Ethan Whitmore. Who is this?"
A pause on the line. "Uh... Mr. Whitmore? This is Sal Russo. I'm the landlord for the building on 31st Street in Bridgeport."
My eyes narrowed. "Why are you calling this number?"
"I was trying to reach Ms. Morgan. I got a notice from a corporate buyer this morning. The whole building was purchased an hour ago in a cash transaction by a holding company called Silver Lake Properties. New management took over immediately. They issued an emergency structural condemned notice. The city inspector just condemned the foundation."
Claire gasped, hearing the voice over the car speakers.
"What does that mean, Russo?" I asked, my voice deadly quiet.
May you like
"It means all tenants have to vacate immediately," Russo stammered, clearly sweating on the other end. "The sheriff's deputies are already here. They’re moving Ms. Morgan's furniture onto the sidewalk right now."
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