Chapter 15 - The Reckoning at Lake Zurich
"Nobody move!" Victor screamed, his eyes bloodshot, his hands trembling violently on the grip of the firearm.
Julian reacted instantly, moving with blinding speed to position his body directly between Victor's gun and me. "Lower the weapon, Whitmore. You're out of your depth."
"Shut up, Julian! Shut up!" Victor spat, his face convulsing in a mixture of terror and unhinged fury. "You think you're so smart, don't you, Sterling? You think you've won?"
"Victor," I said, stepping slightly to Julian's side so I could look my pathetic ex-husband in the eye. "How did you get to Switzerland? You were denied bail."
"Your mother!" Victor laughed hysterically, a sound devoid of reason. "Your loving mother posted an illegal twenty-million-dollar private bond through a corrupt judge in Queens! She put me on a private cargo transport to Zurich! She promised me that if I met her here, she would give me fifty million dollars and a diplomatic passport to South America!"
"And you believed her?" I said, pity cutting through my disgust. "Victor, look around you. Where is Eleanor? Where is Olivia?"
Victor froze, his eyes darting frantically across the opulent boardroom.
"Eleanor used you," Julian said calmly, his voice steady, calculating the distance between himself and Victor's weapon. "She leaked your location to Interpol the moment your plane took off from Teterboro. The Swiss Federal Police are already entering the lobby of this building. You're not here to collect fifty million dollars, Victor. You're here to be arrested as the public fall guy while Eleanor slips away across the border."
"No... no! She loves me! Olivia loves me!" Victor shrieked, tears of humiliation spilling down his hollow cheeks. "Olivia swore she would meet me here! She swore we'd start over in Buenos Aires!"
"Olivia is Eleanor's daughter, Victor," I said coldly, each word landing like a hammer strike against his fragile ego. "She was trained from adolescence to seduce weak, pathetic men like you to facilitate corporate theft. Do you really think a woman like Olivia Vance wanted a suburban climber who needed his wife's family name to get a reservation at Le Bernardin?"
Victor's face went dead white. The gun wavered in his grip.
"She called me... a stepping stone," Victor whispered, his sanity visibly splintering. "When I called her from the tarmac... she laughed at me. She told me to rot in prison."
"Drop the gun, Victor," I said, taking one step forward. "It's over."
"If it's over for me, Grace..." Victor snarled, his manic gaze snapping back onto mine, his finger tightening on the trigger, "...then you don't get to live happily ever after with Julian Sterling!"
*BANG.*
The muzzle flashed.
Julian lunged forward, throwing his full weight into Victor. The bullet tore through the air, shattering the antique crystal decanter on the sideboard into a million shimmering shards.
Julian slammed Victor against the marble table, his right fist driving into Victor's jaw with brutal, devastating force. The gun clattered harmlessly across the polished floor. Victor collapsed like a marionette with severed strings, groaning in agony as Julian pinned his wrist behind his back.
"Swiss Federal Police! Freeze!"
A tactical squad in full combat gear stormed through the shattered boardroom doors, their assault rifles raised, swarming Victor and pinning him to the floor in heavy steel restraints.
Victor was dragged backward out of the room, sobbing, screaming obscenities, broken completely by the very web of greed he had spun.
I stood there, my chest heaving, the adrenaline rushing like fire through my veins.
Julian straightened his jacket, brushing off his cuffs, before turning to face me. He walked over, his eyes searching mine with fierce, unyielding tenderness.
"You're safe," Julian whispered, reaching out to cradle the back of my head, pulling me gently against his chest. I buried my face into his shoulder, breathing in his warmth, letting the horrors of the last few weeks finally crumble under the weight of relief.
"We stopped the liquidation," I murmured against his suit. "We took the company back."
"Not completely," a low, cultured voice murmured from the boardroom speaker system.
Julian stiffened, immediately stepping back to shield me as the massive presentation screen flickered.
The live feed showed the deck of a mega-yacht slicing through the Mediterranean, somewhere off the coast of Monaco. Sitting under the white awning, sipping a martini in oversized designer sunglasses, was Eleanor Carter.
And standing behind her, wearing an exquisite white summer dress and smiling with vicious triumph, was Olivia.
"Congratulations, Grace," Eleanor's voice echoed through the high-vaulted ceiling. "You saved Carter Global's public equity. But you were so focused on Zurich that you forgot to check the real asset."
My heart stopped. "What real asset?"
Olivia leaned down into the camera, holding up a small, worn leather journal bound with brass corners—my father's private journal, containing the encrypted coordinates to the Carter family's deep-sea rare earth mineral reserves off the coast of Madagascar.
"Fifty billion euros is pocket change, little sister," Olivia purred, her eyes flashing with pure malice. "While you and Julian play house in Zurich, we are activating the maritime deeds. If you want the real Carter legacy back... you'll have to come and take it from the bottom of the ocean."
The screen snapped to black.
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Julian looked down at me, his eyes blazing with an intoxicating, dangerous fire.
"Marcus," Julian commanded into his radio, never taking his eyes off mine. "Prep the yacht at Port Hercule. Grace and I are going hunting."