Chapter 9 - Paper Thrones
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Five years ago, after closing the largest commercial development contract in our company’s history, I purchased the Bel Air estate outright for twenty-two million dollars in cash.
I didn't buy it under my personal name. I bought it through Hayes Legacy Holdings LLC, an anonymous trust created to protect my core assets.
When Victor married Vanessa three years later, I allowed them to live in the mansion as a wedding gift. I paid the estate taxes, the property insurance, the landscaping crews, and even the salaries of the eight full-time household servants.
I had given Victor a corporate credit card tied to the holding company with a fifty-thousand-dollar monthly limit, hoping it would give him the freedom to focus on growing his subsidiary branch of Hayes Construction.
Instead, it gave him the delusion of royalty.
He had spent three years parading around Los Angeles, telling investors, banks, and high-society magazines that he was the sole owner of the estate and the heir to a fifty-million-dollar fortune.
He had forgotten one simple legal fact: he was merely a probationary employee residing in corporate-owned housing.
And his probation had just expired.
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I drove slowly toward the nearest private urgent care clinic, where Arthur’s medical team was already waiting to document my injuries. As the nurse washed the blood from my face and took high-resolution photographs of my bruises, I felt no anger.
I only felt the cold, sharp clarity of a master builder preparing to demolish a ruined structure.
