Chapter 9 - The Sirens of Park Avenue
Outside The Pierre Hotel, the October night air was crisp, carrying the scent of autumn leaves from Central Park across the pavement of 5th Avenue.
A fleet of six police cruisers, their red and blue strobe lights painting the limestone facades of Manhattan’s most expensive real estate in rhythmic flashes of emergency crimson, were idling by the curb. A crowd of over a hundred paparazzi, fashion journalists, and late-night onlookers had gathered behind the velvet police barricades, their cameras flashing like rapid-fire strobe lights.
The double doors of the hotel flew open.
The flashbulbs erupted in a blinding wall of white light.
Richard Sterling was dragged out first. He tried to duck his head, hiding his scratched and bloodied face against his chest, but the press corps was relentless.
"Richard! Did you poison your wife?"
"Mr. Sterling! What happened to the Vanguard IPO?"
"Is Sterling Vanguard facing SEC liquidation?"
"Richard, look up! Look at the camera!"
The microphones were shoved into his face like spears. Richard stumbled on the curb, his knee hitting the wet asphalt before an officer roughly hoisted him by his collar and shoved him into the back of an unmarked police sedan. Through the tinted, rain-streaked window, Richard caught a glimpse of his own reflection: ruined, degraded, a ghost of the man who had walked in through the front doors three hours earlier.
Behind him, Vanessa Vance was screaming at the photographers, trying to spit at a cameraman who got too close.
"STOP FILMING ME! I'M AN EXECUTIVE! GET AWAY FROM ME!" she shrieked, her voice echoing down 5th Avenue until the cruiser door slammed shut with a heavy, final *thunk*, cutting her off from the world she had burned her soul to enter.
Inside the presidential suite on the thirty-ninth floor, Claire stood before the floor-to-ceiling panoramic windows, holding an untouched flute of mineral water.
Behind her, the double doors of the suite opened.
Her lead attorney, Arthur Pendelton—senior partner at Sullivan & Cromwell and the most feared corporate litigator on the Eastern Seaboard—walked in carrying a leather portfolio.
"It’s done, Claire," Pendelton said, his voice quiet and respectful.
Claire didn't turn around. She watched the police cruisers pulling away from the curb below, their sirens wailing into the distance as they headed downtown toward the Metropolitan Correction Center.
"Status on the accounts?" she asked.
"The federal judge signed the emergency asset preservation order twenty minutes ago," Pendelton reported, unzipping the portfolio and placing several documents on the marble coffee table. "All seventy-five million dollars transferred to Vanessa Vance’s offshore accounts have been successfully intercepted and frozen by federal authorities. The Cayman shell entity has been seized."
"And the board?"
"Every board member has submitted their unconditional resignation, effective immediately," Pendelton continued with a faint, admiring smirk. "Leonard Ross called five minutes ago. Goldman Sachs wants to restructure the entire offering under Montgomery Technologies. They are willing to cut their underwriting fee by half and guarantee an opening valuation of eight billion dollars whenever you are ready to ring the bell."
Claire took a slow sip of her water.
"Tell Leonard we will talk on Wednesday," she said smoothly. "And Arthur?"
"Yes, Claire?"
"File the divorce petition at nine a.m. sharp tomorrow morning."
"Under what terms?"
Claire turned away from the window, her silhouette framed by the glittering lights of the Manhattan skyline. The emerald gown hung on her frame with breathtaking elegance; the thin scratch near her ear was no longer a wound, but a badge of total liberation.
"Under the terms of total forfeiture," Claire said, her voice steady and clear. "Infidelity, attempted murder, and corporate fraud. He gets nothing. Not a single stock option, not a single dollar of alimony, not an apartment, not a watch. I want him to leave prison in twenty years with exactly what he brought into my life."
"Which was?" Pendelton asked.
Claire smiled for the first time that night—a cold, breathtaking, brilliant smile.
May you like
"Nothing."
***
