Chapter 7: The Grandfather's Wrath
Miles away in his sprawling, fortress-like estate office, Arthur Sterling sat behind a massive mahogany desk carved from a single piece of ancient timber. At seventy-eight years old, his silver hair was combed back with military precision, and his piercing gray eyes gleamed with the ruthless intelligence that had built a multi-billion-dollar dynasty. When Vivienne’s voice came through his secure earpiece—cold, quiet, and carrying the unmistakable weight of unmitigated fury—the old man’s expression hardened into stone. He didn't blink. He didn't flinch. He simply closed the leather-bound ledger he was reading and set his fountain pen down with a sharp, echoing clack. "Who dared?" Arthur asked, his voice a low, gravelly baritone that vibrated with suppressed rage. When Vivienne simply replied with Ethan Sterling’s name—no relation, just a pathetic corporate climber who had overstepped his bounds—Arthur let out a dry, humorless laugh that sounded like grinding stones. "Ethan Sterling," the old man repeated, tasting the name like poison on his tongue. "The CEO of Sterling Vanguard Holdings. A boy playing with matches in a gunpowder factory." Arthur reached out his weathered, age-spotted hand and tapped the glass surface of his master terminal. Instantly, three massive holographic displays flickered to life, illuminating the dark room with cascading lines of financial data, asset portfolios, corporate shares, and debt leverage ratios. Arthur’s fingers flew across the mechanical keyboard with astonishing speed, executing pre-programmed macros that had been designed for precisely this kind of emergency. "By midnight," Arthur murmured to the empty room, his voice dripping with chilling, absolute darkness, "he won't have a penny left. Not a stock, not a car, not a suit on his back. Consider it done, my dear." He ended the call without saying goodbye, his mind already operating like a high-speed supercomputer dedicated entirely to the total and utter destruction of Ethan Sterling.
