Chapter 6 - Shadows at the Gate
I looked at the message on my phone, then looked back at Julian.
"Stay here," I commanded.
"Alex, what is it?" Julian whimpered, looking up with wide, terrified eyes. "Who's at the gate?"
"The people you owe money to," I said flatly.
I turned and walked out of the guest house, pulling the heavy glass door shut behind me. I didn't head back toward the main house. Instead, I walked down the stone path leading to the private perimeter driveway where my head of security, Marcus, was waiting beside a black SUV.
Marcus was a forty-five-year-old former Delta Force operator who had managed my personal security detail for eight years. He stood six-foot-four, stone-faced, holding a tactical radio in his hand.
Beside his SUV, pinned against the hood with their hands zip-tied behind their backs, were two men in dark suits. They didn't look like local street thugs. They wore expensive tailored coats, but their knuckles were scarred, and their eyes carried the cold, calculating detachment of professional enforcers.
"Report, Marcus," I said, stopping three feet from them.
"They bypassed the outer sensor grid near the east wall, sir," Marcus reported smoothly. "Carrying concealed suppressed sidearms and a high-frequency signal jammer. They have a sedan idling two blocks down the avenue."
I looked at the taller of the two men. He had a faint scar running through his left eyebrow and spoke with a smooth, accented voice.
"Who sent you?" I asked.
The man offered a mocking smirk. "Mr. Vance. This is a private matter between our employer and your brother. Julian owes forty-eight million HKD—roughly six point two million US dollars. He missed his deadline at midnight."
"You came into my home armed," I said, my voice dropping into an icy register. "You crossed a line that guarantees you will never leave this city as free men."
The man's smirk flickered for a fraction of a second, but he tried to maintain his composure. "Call your brother, Mr. Vance. Have him step out with his passport and the remainder of the principal, and we walk away. You're a businessman. You know how debts work."
"I do know how debts work," I agreed quietly. "And I know that men who carry suppressed weapons into a private residence in Beverly Hills aren't here to collect a debt. They're here to execute a witness so his estate defaults to a shell company."
The man's eyes widened slightly. I had hit the mark.
Julian hadn't just lost money. He had signed a secondary indemnity agreement—a clause allowing the lenders to claim his equity shares in Vance Global if he died without heirs. They weren't here to threaten him; they were here to eliminate him and take a ten percent voting stake in my multi-billion-dollar enterprise.
"Marcus," I said, turning to my security chief.
"Sir?"
"Transfer these two to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Organized Crime Division. Hand over the signal jammer, the suppressed weapons, and the perimeter camera footage. I want an immediate federal warrant issued for the syndicate backing them."
"Understood, sir," Marcus nodded, gesturing to two of his armed guards to haul the men into the back of the armored van.
"You can't protect him forever, Vance!" the scarred man shouted as he was dragged away. "Your brother sold his soul in Macau!"
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"My brother is a fool," I replied, watching the van doors slam shut. "But this estate belongs to me."
I turned back toward the main house. The threat outside my gates was being handled by federal law enforcement. But the cancer inside my family still needed to be excised.
