Chapter 10 - The True Queen of Chicago
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Dominic finally snapped out of his paralyzed state. The word bankrupt triggered a primal, desperate survival instinct.
“You're bluffing,” Dominic snarled, his face flushing with panicked rage. He reached into his tuxedo pocket and pulled out his phone, frantically dialing his Chief Financial Officer, a man named Sterling who was standing near the buffet tables across the room.
Sterling didn't answer the phone. He was staring at his own tablet, his face ashen, looking like he was having a heart attack.
“Sterling!” Dominic bellowed across the silent ballroom, abandoning all pretense of high-society decorum. “Check the offshore accounts! Call the bank in Geneva!”
Sterling slowly looked up, his hands shaking violently as he met Dominic’s eyes.
“It’s gone, Mr. Vale,” Sterling yelled back, his voice cracking. “All of it. The Cayman accounts, the Swiss holding funds, the real estate deeds... the access codes have been overridden by a master cipher. We’ve been locked out of our own empire.”
Dominic stared at his CFO in absolute disbelief. “That’s impossible! Only I have the biometric keys!”
“You have the operational keys, Dominic,” Gabriel Cross corrected him, a cruel smile finally gracing his sharp features. “But you never read the fine print of your own prenuptial agreement, did you? You were too eager to secure the fifty million dollars. You didn't realize that the holding company’s charter contained a fail-safe clause.”
Evelyn held up her right hand, displaying the heavy Moretti signet ring.
“The accounts are tied to the bloodline, Dominic,” Evelyn explained, her voice echoing with devastating finality. “As long as I was your wife, you were permitted to act as a steward of my family’s wealth. But the moment you initiated divorce proceedings, the fail-safe triggered. The assets automatically reverted to the primary shareholder. Me.”
Dominic dropped his phone. It clattered loudly against the marble floor, the screen shattering into a spiderweb of cracks.
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He was ruined. Fifteen years of climbing over bodies, making enemies, and building a fearsome reputation, all erased in the span of five minutes by the quiet woman he had discarded like trash.
He looked around the room. The politicians, the developers, the syndicate bosses—the people who had kissed his ring an hour ago—were now looking at him with naked contempt. In their world, weakness was a terminal disease, and Dominic Vale was suddenly bleeding out on the ballroom floor.
