Chapter 7 - The Gathering of the Vultures
The private conference room on the fifty-fourth floor of the Sterling Tower looked out over the mist-shrouded expanse of Lake Michigan.
The room was paneled in bleached oak, furnished with a thirty-foot glass table surrounded by eighteen high-backed leather chairs. Sitting at the table were six men and two women—the executive committee of the Sterling Global Foundation and the senior managing partners of the primary legal trustees.
At the head of the table sat Arthur Vance.
Arthur was sixty-two, wore a bespoke double-breasted gray pinstripe suit with a lavender silk handkerchief in his breast pocket, and had spent the last four hours frantically making phone calls to municipal judges, transit commissioners, and corporate publicists. His hands shook slightly as he adjusted his wire-rimmed spectacles, his forehead glistening with a fine sheen of cold sweat.
The heavy walnut double doors clicked open.
Harrison Sterling walked into the room.
He had not changed into a tailored suit. He had showered, but he wore a simple, unbranded black wool sweater, dark canvas trousers, and his old, scuffed leather boots. His silver hair was brushed back, his slate-gray eyes clear, hard, and terrifyingly calm.
And walking half a pace behind his right shoulder was Jake.
Jake was still wearing his faded jeans and his worn gym shoes, though he had discarded his work jacket in the private elevator. He carried his canvas backpack over one shoulder, his chin lifted, his expression completely unreadable as he surveyed the eighteen billion dollars of net worth gathered around the glass table.
Arthur Vance surged to his feet, his chair screeching against the floorboards.
"Harrison!" Arthur choked out, forcing an expansive, theatrical smile onto his trembling lips as he extended both hands across the table. "Thank God! The reports from the station were... they were completely distorted! My nephew Gordon is a fool, an absolute idiot, I’ve already signed his termination papers, I had him escorted off the premises by transit police—"
"Sit down, Arthur," Harrison said.
The words were spoken at conversational volume, yet Arthur Vance stopped as if he had run full-tilt into a reinforced brick wall. He sank slowly back into his leather chair, his hands retreating to the edge of the glass.
Harrison walked to the head of the table. He did not sit. He stood behind the massive central chair, resting his palms flat against the glass surface, looking down the length of the room at the eight people who controlled the largest logistics and infrastructure empire in the Midwest.
"For three years," Harrison began, his voice smooth, low, and vibrating with absolute authority, "this board has operated under the assumption that the Sterling bloodline ended with my brother’s death in Switzerland. You have drafted succession plans. You have allocated voting shares to collateral trusts. Arthur has spent eight million dollars of foundation capital positioning his logistics company to absorb our rail transport leases."
Several directors shifted uncomfortably in their seats. A female partner near the end of the table cleared her throat, her eyes darting toward the documents inside her leather folder.
"Under the 1974 Charter of the Sterling Trust," Harrison continued, his gaze locking onto Arthur Vance, "the primary beneficiary of the family estate must be a direct descendant of the foundational partnership. If no descendant is identified by the five-year anniversary of the founder's death, the assets liquidate into a public charitable trust managed by the sitting executive committee."
Harrison turned his head slightly, his hand reaching out to rest firmly on Jake’s shoulder.
"This is Jacob Mercer," Harrison announced, his voice echoing off the glass walls. "The biological grandson of Thomas Sterling. The lawful, sole heir to sixty-two percent of the voting shares of Sterling Global Enterprises."
The conference room went so silent you could hear the distant hiss of the central air system sixty stories above the pavement.
Arthur Vance’s face turned an awful, translucent shade of gray. His glasses slipped half an inch down his nose. "Harrison... that is impossible. Clara Mercer abandoned the family in 1994. The legal release was signed—"
"The legal release was forged by your father, Arthur," a dry, clinical voice spoke from the doorway.
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Arthur Sterling, the family’s chief legal counsel, walked into the room carrying a red-rope legal binder six inches thick. He set it on the glass table with a heavy, administrative thud that made the crystal water carafes ring.
"We ran the genetic panel forty minutes ago using the diagnostic lab on thirty-two," the lawyer said, sliding a certified single-page laboratory manifest across the glass directly into Arthur Vance's hands. "Sixteen short tandem repeat markers. The statistical probability of paternity is ninety-nine point nine-nine-eight percent. Jake is Thomas’s blood. And under the terms of the original 1922 trust deed, his rights supersede every proxy vote executed by this board for the last twenty-four months."
