Chapter 6 - The Fire at the Foundation
Within forty-eight minutes, the local deputies had backed down, retreating to their cruisers as a convoy of unmarked federal vehicles rolled up the estate driveway. The Attorney General’s investigators didn't come with local warrants; they came with sweeping federal subpoenas, freezing the Vance family bank accounts and hauling away boxes of digital servers from Victoria’s corporate offices downtown.
By midnight, the immediate threat of arrest had evaporated, but the war had only just begun.
Nathan sat in the study with Marcus and Grace, reviewing the digital copies of his father’s final ledger. Lily had finally fallen asleep in the guest room upstairs, exhausted from the terror of the previous twenty-four hours.
“They’re going to retaliate, Nathan,” Grace said softly, sitting across from him, her bruised shoulder bandaged. “Victoria’s family has too much power. They own the judges, the banks, the local media.”
“Not anymore,” Marcus said, sliding a freshly printed dossier across the desk. “When the SEC froze their foundation accounts tonight, they triggered a cross-default clause on all their real estate holdings. Their empire is bleeding out in real-time.”
Nathan reached out, covering Grace’s trembling hand with his own. For five years, he had lived a ghost life, manipulated by a father he thought he knew and engaged to a monster he never truly saw. But looking at Grace, he realized the past couldn't be rewritten—only avenged.
“They thought they could bury the truth under money and silence,” Nathan said, his voice hard as iron. “They thought wrong.”
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He stood up, walking to the large bay window that looked out over the sprawling, manicured lawns of the estate. The sun was beginning to peek over the distant hills, painting the sky in fierce shades of gold and crimson.
“Tomorrow morning,” Nathan declared, turning back to face them, “we go public. We burn the old empire down to the ground, and we build a new one—starting with the three of us.”
