Chapter 35 - The Blood Sovereign Auction
The sudden, thundering roar of twin turbine engines shattered the silence above the yacht. The vibrations traveled down the structural steel columns, rattling the medical instruments on the metal trays.
Alexander had arrived.
I shoved the micro-SD card and the signet ring deep into the lining of my blazer, stepped out of the medical suite, and climbed back up to the main salon. Sofia was standing near the floor-to-ceiling glass doors, her eyes wide with terror as she pointed toward the aft deck.
A massive Sikorsky S-76 helicopter, bearing the sovereign crest of Vance Global, had landed on the yacht's reinforced helipad. The rotors slowed to an idle hum, kicking up a mist of salt spray into the twilight sky.
The cabin door slid open. Alexander Vance stepped out.
He didn't look like the broken man Ricardo had exposed on the live feed. He was dressed in a tailored charcoal suit, his silver hair immaculate, flanked by three men in dark tactical gear and an elderly man carrying an embossed leather briefcase—Maître Laurent, the premier corporate notary of the Monegasque royal court.
Alexander walked into the salon with the unhurried swagger of an emperor returning to inspect a rebellious province. But when his eyes landed on Eleanor, he stopped dead in his tracks.
For three seconds, the master manipulator of European finance looked like a terrified boy caught in a crypt.
"Eleanor," Alexander breathed, his voice cracking slightly before he regained his composure. "You... you were supposed to remain in Tangier."
"And miss the execution of our life’s work?" Eleanor said, remaining seated at the head of the table, not offering him so much as a handshake. "Sit down, Alexander. You’re late. And your little highway stunt with Ricardo nearly destroyed the public credit lines before we could execute the final ledger."
Alexander’s jaw tightened. He turned his gaze toward me, his eyes burning with a mixture of hatred and grudging respect.
"Victoria," he said, stepping toward me. "You cost me four hundred million dollars in market cap this morning. You turned my personal life into a global circus. You thought selling my mansion and closing my accounts would stop this?"
"I don't think it stopped you, Father," I replied, crossing my arms. "I know it baited you. You had to come here. You had to retrieve the child, because without an heir recognized under the Monegasque maritime jurisdiction, your sovereign charter becomes null and void at midnight."
"How smart you are," Alexander mocked softly, pulling Maître Laurent forward. "Always the top of your class. But you forgot one thing, darling daughter. This principality operates under sovereign banking treaties that predate your modern regulatory boards. Maître Laurent holds the emergency succession decree. Camilla has given birth to a male Vance. As the legal father, I assume total, unilateral power of attorney over the Sovereign Trust—and I am executing an immediate buyout of every share you hold at ninety percent below par."
"Is that so?" Eleanor interjected, tapping her wine glass with a platinum pen. "And whose capital do you think is funding the buyout, Alexander?"
Alexander froze. He turned back to Eleanor. "What?"
"You didn't really think the private credit facilities you drew down this week came from the Saudis, did you?" Eleanor’s voice was pure poison, dripping with decades of calculated contempt. "Every dollar you borrowed to keep Vance Global liquid after Victoria drained your cash reserves came directly from *The Leviathan Group*. My group. I bought your debt notes three hours ago for pennies on the euro."
Alexander stepped back, his face turning an ash-grey that rivaled Ricardo’s corpse.
"You set me up," Alexander whispered. "You both did."
"No, Father," I said, stepping forward until I was standing directly between my father and my mother—the two monsters who had birthed me, used me, and planned to sacrifice me on the altar of their greed. "She didn't set you up with me. She set you up *for* me."
I reached into my pocket, pulled out the gold signet ring, and slammed it down onto the glass table directly between them.
The clatter of the gold against the glass sounded like a gunshot.
Both Alexander and Eleanor stared at the ring as if a live cobra had just materialized on the dining table.
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"1982," I said, my voice echoing through the massive salon. "The digital autopsy of Marcus Vance is currently uploading to the Swiss Federal Prosecutor’s server. You didn't just commit corporate fraud. You committed capital murder. And whichever one of you wants to survive the next twenty minutes had better start bidding for my silence."
***
