Chapter 5 - The Financial Guillotine
Before I could deal with Marcus physically, I needed to amputate Victor Sterling's power. Sterling believed he was playing a game of chess. He didn't realize I owned the board.
By 6:00 AM, the financial markets in Europe were opening. I sat in the war room with a headset on, orchestrating a bloodbath.
"Dump everything," I ordered my head trader in London. "Liquidate all Mercer holdings in the global supply chain sector. Flood the market with cheap freight contracts."
"Sir, we'll take a short-term loss of over two hundred million," the trader warned nervously.
"Do it," I barked.
Within minutes, global freight rates plummeted. Mercer Logistics could absorb the loss; we had billions in liquid capital. Victor Sterling’s company, heavily leveraged and drowning in high-interest debt, could not.
By 7:30 AM, Sterling Global’s stock went into freefall. Margin calls triggered automatically. Sterling's creditors, panicked by the sudden crash in sector value, began demanding immediate repayment on loans he couldn't service.
I watched the red lines on the monitors plummet, destroying Sterling’s net worth in real-time. He thought he could steal my children to leverage my company. Instead, I used my company to vaporize his existence.
My phone buzzed. It was an unknown number.
I answered, letting the silence hang.
"You're a dead man, Julian," Victor Sterling’s voice hissed through the speaker, thick with panic and fury. "You think bankrupting me changes anything? I know where you are. I know where the bitch and the brats are."
"You don't have the capital to pay a cab driver, Victor," I replied, my voice dripping with cold disdain. "Your hit squad is gone. Your company is ash. And if you ever speak my wife's name again, I will make sure the federal prosecutors bury you under a prison that doesn't have windows."
"Ask your dog Marcus how secure your perimeter is," Sterling laughed, a desperate, manic sound.
May you like
The line went dead.
I dropped the phone. Sterling was trying to rattle me, but he had just confirmed my worst fear. Marcus hadn't fled when his accounts were frozen. He was already here.
