Chapter 16 - VAULT 409
At 8:30 AM on Friday morning—my twenty-ninth birthday—I stood eighty feet below street level inside the reinforced steel subterranean vaults of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on Maiden Lane.
Accompanied by Marcus Vance and two armed security officers provided by the bank, I stepped toward Vault 409. The heavy platinum key my mother had left behind turned smoothly into the dual-key mechanical lock. With a deep pneumatic hiss, the heavy steel door swung open.
Inside rested a single leather-bound box.
I opened it to reveal the original 1995 Master Founders Agreement, alongside a set of authenticated bearer bonds and corporate registration documents from Luxembourg.
Marcus picked up the ledgers, his eyes widening as he flipped through the pages.
"Good God, Emma..." Marcus whispered, letting out a stunned breath. "Eleanor didn't just fund Aegis Capital—she held a seventy percent sleeping equity clause in its parent company, Vance International Holdings. Katherine was never the sole owner. She was an operating manager acting under a revocable power of attorney."
"Which means," I said, looking at the seal stamped on the final page, "Katherine didn't buy Vance & Co.'s debt with her own money. She bought it using my mother's money."
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"Under international commercial law," Marcus said, a sharp, triumphant smile appearing on his face, "a corporate officer who uses parent company funds to buy debt from a subsidiary without board disclosure commits grand larceny. You don't owe Aegis forty-two million dollars. Aegis owes you total corporate surrender."
"Get the car, Marcus," I said, adjusting the lapels of my coat. "We have a 5:00 PM appointment at the boardroom."
