Chapter 18 - The Counter-Strike
The shouts of the choked, blindingly soaked guards echoed across the lawn as they scrambled out of the deluge, slipping and falling on the foam-covered gravel, their weapons clogged with thick chemical slurry.
Michael dashed forward, grabbing one of the dropped stun-batons from the grass, while Ethan powered his chair through the service path, bypassing the slick foam entirely.
Ethan kicked open the side access door of the carriage house.
Inside, tied to a wooden support beam beside a running transport van, was Brooke. Her face was bruised, her lip split, and her clothes were damp from the condensation in the cold garage.
When she saw Ethan rolling through the doorway, her breath hitched, and tears cut clean tracks through the grime on her cheeks. "Ethan..."
Michael rushed in behind him, using a utility knife to slice through the heavy zip-ties around her wrists.
The moment she was free, Brooke collapsed to her knees, burying her face against Ethan's lap, weeping uncontrollably. "I'm sorry... Ethan, I'm so sorry. I didn't know what they were doing... I thought you were dead..."
Ethan placed his hand on her head, his fingers gently tangling in her matted hair. "I know, Brooke. I read Thomas's letter. I know everything."
She looked up at him, her eyes swollen and wide with terror. "Catherine is leaving for the downtown headquarters right now. She has Judge Sterling's preliminary injunction in her briefcase. If she presents it to the board at nine, the transfer becomes permanent under state corporate law. You can't beat them in a courtroom, Ethan! Sterling owns the courts!"
"We're not going to a courtroom," Ethan said, his voice hard as iron. "Michael, get the keys to the transport van."
"Where are we going?" Michael asked, tossing the guards' dropped key ring into the air and catching it.
"To the east ridge," Ethan said. "We're getting the codicil from my mother's greenhouse. And then we're going to crash Catherine's coronation."
Twenty minutes later, the transport van tore through the overgrown gravel trail leading to the eastern edge of the estate.
The greenhouse sat on a lonely bluff overlooking the valley. Its Victorian glass panes were mostly shattered, choked with ivy and skeletal thorns that had grown unchecked for two decades.
Ethan didn't wait for Michael to help him. Using the modified ramp on the van's side door, he wheeled himself out into the freezing pre-dawn wind, cutting through the rotting wooden threshold of the greenhouse.
"Where would Thomas hide it?" Brooke asked, shivering as she shone a heavy flashlight across the collapsed iron tables and shattered terra-cotta pots.
"Not in the ground," Ethan said, his eyes scanning the rusted iron architecture. "My mother loved the winter orchids. Arthur built a climate-controlled root cellar beneath the central stone pedestal."
Michael knelt beside the shattered marble fountain in the center of the room. Beneath a layer of damp moss and dead leaves, he found an iron ring flush with the flagstones.
With a grunt of effort, Michael pulled the stone slab up.
Inside the shallow, lead-lined recess sat a heavy, rectangular brass lockbox. The Vance family crest was embossed on the lid.
Ethan took the small brass key Thomas had left in the private safe—the key Catherine had overlooked three years ago—and inserted it into the lock.
It turned with a smooth, heavy click.
Inside the velvet-lined box lay Arthur Vance's handwritten codicil, sealed in airtight acrylic, alongside a pristine laboratory DNA match report bearing the state seal of New York.
The report confirmed: *Ethan Vance — 99.9% biological match to Arthur Vance.*
*Chad Sterling Vance — 0.0% biological match.*
Ethan lifted the heavy folio into his lap. He looked at the digital clock on the van's dashboard.
It was 7:45 AM.
The board meeting at Vance Tower in downtown Manhattan was scheduled to convene in seventy-five minutes.
May you like
"Michael," Ethan said, his gaze fixed on the rising sun breaking over the city skyline in the distance. "Call Harrison. Tell the senior board members that the true chairman of Vance Holdings is coming to claim his seat."
***
