Chapter 7 - The Autopsy of an Empire
Arthur collapsed back into his chair, his cane slipping from his fingers and clattering to the floor. The sound was pathetic, the hollow rattle of wood against wood.
“Ethan…” Arthur rasped, his chest heaving, his left hand clutching at his collar. “Ethan, you can’t do this. I am your father! This company bears our name! Your grandfather’s portrait is hanging in the lobby! You cannot tear down your own blood!”
“My own blood?” I repeated, the words tasting like ash.
I walked slowly around the perimeter of the table until I was standing behind Arthur’s chair. I leaned down, my mouth inches from his ear.
“Where was my blood five years ago, Arthur?” I whispered, cold and venomous. “When my ten-year-old child stood in your dining room with sugar glass embedded in her cheek? When her blood was soaking through my shirt? Did you remember my blood then? Or did you strike your signet ring against the table and tell me to apologize to the coward who hurt her, or be discarded like garbage?”
Arthur’s eyes filled with tears of pure, helpless terror. “I… I was trying to keep the family together! Blake was fragile—he needed discipline, he needed—”
“He needed a prison cell five years ago,” I cut him off, straightening up. “Instead, you gave him my inheritance, you gave him my seat, and you gave him a license to destroy everything you built. You chose him. And now, you get to live with the cost of your choice.”
Eleanor rushed across the room, her high heels clicking frantically, and grabbed my arm. Her fingers dug through the wool of my jacket, her eyes wild, mascara running down her cheeks.
“Ethan! Please!” she begged, her voice pitching into a high, desperate wail. “We made a mistake! We were wrong about the cake! I’ll apologize! Blake will apologize! We will go to June on our knees, Ethan! We’ll bring her anything she wants! Diamonds, cars, a trust fund—whatever she wants! Just don't destroy your brother! He can’t go to prison, Ethan! He’s not like you! He won’t survive it!”
I looked down at Eleanor’s manicured hands clinging to my sleeve.
For thirty years, I had craved those hands. When I was a child with a scraped knee, when Rebecca died and I was drowning in grief, I had wanted a mother to hold me, to tell me that everything would be all right. She had never touched me like this. She had never held me with this kind of fierce, desperate intensity.
She was only doing it now to shield Blake from the consequences of his own greed.
Very gently, with two fingers, I peeled her hands off my jacket.
“You’re right, Eleanor,” I said, looking down at her with nothing but profound pity. “Blake isn't like me. When Blake was knocked down, you built him a gilded castle out of other people’s money. When I was knocked down, I built an empire out of sweat and iron.”
I turned back to Blake.
Blake was sitting with his head in his hands, hyperventilating. The reality of the yellow folder was setting in: the FBI, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the loss of his penthouse, his cars, his society friends, the country clubs. The boy who had spent his life stepping on everyone below him had just hit the bedrock of reality.
“What… what do you want?” Blake choked out, looking up at me through swollen, red-rimmed eyes. “You want me to beg? Is that what this is? You want me to get on my knees and beg you for mercy like a dog?”
“You couldn't beg well enough to satisfy me, Blake,” I said.
I reached into the inner breast pocket of my suit.
Blake flinched, shrinking back into his chair as if he expected me to pull out a weapon.
Instead, I pulled out a small, four-by-six photograph and set it gently on top of the yellow folder, right in front of his eyes.
It was a photograph of June taken in the pediatric emergency room five years ago.
She was sitting on the examination table in a paper gown. The left side of her face was swollen and purple, four black surgical sutures running beneath her eye, her dark eyes looking into the camera with a quiet, devastating heartbreak.
Blake stared at the photograph. His breath hitched.
“Do you remember that afternoon, Blake?” I asked, my voice terrifyingly calm. “You shoved her face into that cake and laughed. You said, *‘Your uncle’s going to make this birthday memorable.’*”
Blake closed his eyes, a dry sob tearing from his chest.
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“Well,” I whispered, leaning over the table until my face was six inches from his. “You were right. It was memorable. It was the afternoon I decided that you would never, ever hurt another innocent person again.”
***
