CHAPTER 6: THE TWIST OF THE ARCHITECT’S FINAL VERDICT
I did not flinch.
Claire did not step back.
A slow, radiant, terrifying smile broke across Ethan Vance’s face—a smile that held zero fear, zero debts, zero lies, and zero graves.
“You really believe you built this financial empire, don’t you, Uncle Arthur?” I whispered softly.
My voice was forty decibels of compressed, unyielding polar diamond.
Arthur Vance froze, his claws hovering six inches above the granite:
“What are you talking about?! I drafted the Valkyrie trust! I funded Sterling-Vance Asset Management! I directed Marcus’s acquisitions! We own sixty billion dollars in offshore capital!”
I reached into my grandfather’s tweed jacket pocket.
I did not pull out an archival document.
I pulled out a small, circular, hand-machined piece of tarnished brass:
The master 1944 United States Navy Admiralty Foundation Die—the physical die used by Arthur Mercer Senior and my father to stamp the red wax on the original wartime sovereign deeds:
