Chapter 5 - The Vance Empire Fractures
David Sterling pulled three additional sets of legal notices from his case, sliding one to Robert, one to the club's board chairman who sat paralyzed at the far end of the table, and holding the final one out to Victoria.
She refused to take it. Her hands were pressed tightly against her chest, her breathing shallow and ragged.
"This is illegal!" she cried out, her voice cracking with pure panic. "You can’t just close a club! There are five hundred members! Fortune 500 CEOs! Judges! Politicians! You can’t just kick us out!"
"I am not kicking *them* out, Mrs. Vance," James said with surgical calm. "I am seizing the land. Under the terms of the default, Whispering Pines Country Club has precisely seventy-two hours to vacate the premises or purchase the underlying real estate at current fair-market commercial evaluation."
The club chairman, an aging retired banker named Harold Finch, spoke up, his voice cracking. "Mr. Carter... the fair market evaluation for six hundred acres in this corridor... it's over ninety million dollars! The syndicate doesn't have that kind of liquid reserve!"
"Then I suggest you begin packing the silver, Mr. Finch," David Sterling noted dispassionately.
Just then, Victoria’s phone began to vibrate violently against the glass tabletop. The screen flashed with the caller ID: **RICHARD - URGENT**.
Victoria stared at the phone as if it were a venomous snake. With trembling fingers, she picked it up, pressing it to her ear. "R-Richard?"
A roar of pure, unadulterated fury exploded through the receiver, so loud that nearly every person in the dead-silent room could hear it.
"VICTORIA! WHAT IN GOD'S NAME DID YOU DO?!"
Victoria flinched, pulling the phone an inch from her ear. "Richard, honey, listen to me, there’s some lunatic here claiming he owns—"
"SHUT UP!" Richard Vance screamed, his voice cracking with hysteria. "Carter Commercial Capital just revoked our entire credit facility! Thirty-two million dollars in operational loans—CALLED IN! IMMEDIATELY! Every bank in North Carolina has frozen our escrow accounts! The South End tower project is shutting down in thirty minutes! The subcontractors are walking off the site right now!"
Victoria felt the room spin. The floor beneath her seemed to tilt at a forty-five-degree angle. "Richard... how? Why would they do that?"
"BECAUSE THE FOUNDER AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF CARTER CAPITAL IS JAMES ARTHUR CARTER!" her husband shrieked. "My lead lender just called me and said his boss personally ordered our total liquidation because my wife assaulted him with a glass of ice water at a golf club! Did you throw a drink in the face of the most powerful private equity lender in the South, Victoria?! DID YOU?!"
The silence in the boardroom was absolute. Every eye was locked on the canary-yellow silk blouse that was now visibly trembling with her rapid, terrified heartbeat.
"I... I didn't know..." she whimpered, tears finally breaking through her heavy mascara, carving black streaks down her manicured cheeks. "Richard... he was wearing a caddie shirt... he wouldn't carry the bags..."
"You ruined us," Richard whispered, his voice suddenly dropping into a hollow, terrifying void of despair. "Thirty years of building this company... gone. Because you couldn't control your disgusting ego for five minutes. Do not come home, Victoria. My lawyers will have the divorce papers served at your mother's house by noon."
The line went dead.
A soft *beep-beep-beep* echoed through the room.
Victoria’s hand went limp. The gold iPhone slipped from her fingers, striking the polished floor and shattering its OLED screen into a spiderweb of cracks.
She looked up at James, her eyes wide, wild, and pleading. The arrogant socialite who had commanded the veranda twenty-four hours ago was gone. In her place stood a completely ruined woman, stripped of her husband, her status, and her illusion of invulnerability in a matter of sixty seconds.
"Mr. Carter..." she sobbed, taking a step toward him, her hands clasped as if in prayer. "Please... you can't do this... it was a mistake... it was just a glass of water! I was stressed! My sister was visiting, and I had a migraine, and I just lost my temper! I’ll apologize! I’ll get down on my knees right now on the veranda and apologize to every caddie in the state! Please... don't destroy my life!"
James looked down at her with neither anger nor pity. His gaze was as vacant and unyielding as a marble monument.
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"Yesterday, Mrs. Vance, you told me that I was a zero. You told me that a peasant needs to learn what happens when he barks at royalty." James leaned down, his voice dropping into a razor-sharp whisper that chilled her to the marrow. "Today, you learn the difference between having money... and having power."
***
