Chapter 4 - The Currency of Pain
The air inside the dark penthouse turned freezing.
Julian looked wildly from Dominic to the two monolithic bodyguards flanking the doorway. Panic, sharp and toxic, flooded his veins. "Wait! Look, this is a misunderstanding! Lily... Lily was hysterical! She attacked me first! She had a psychotic break—"
Before Julian could finish the word *break*, Dominic moved.
For a man of fifty-two, Dominic possessed the explosive, ungodly speed of a striking cobra. In a single blur of motion, he crossed the eight feet between them. The heavy gloved hand shot forward, clamping around Julian’s throat like a hydraulic vise.
Julian let out a strangled wheeze as Dominic hoisted him off his feet with one arm, lifting the six-foot-two young man effortlessly and slamming him backward onto the mahogany dining table. The wood groaned under the impact, crystal glasses shattering on the floor.
"Julian!" Beatrice screamed, lunging forward with her manicured nails aimed at Dominic’s face. "Get your filthy hands off my son!"
She didn't make it two steps. Marcus materialized out of the gloom, catching Beatrice by both wrists and twisting them behind her back in a crisp, military submission hold. He pushed her down onto her knees on the rug.
"Quiet," Marcus muttered, his grip unbreakable.
Beatrice writhed, her face purple with indignation and shock. "You animal! Do you know who my husband is? Do you know who our family is? We will have you executed! We have judges on retainer! We will ruin you!"
Dominic didn't even glance back at her. He leaned over Julian, who was clawing frantically at the leather fingers crushing his windpipe, his face turning a dark, mottled blue.
"Julian," Dominic whispered, leaning so close their foreheads nearly touched. "Look at me."
Julian’s eyes, bulging with terror, locked onto Dominic’s gray irises.
"Forty slaps," Dominic said, his tone conversational, like a tutor explaining an elementary math problem. "Delivered by an old woman whose hands should be shaking with arthritis. Tell me... how did my daughter sound when she begged you to stop?"
Julian couldn't speak. He could only make pathetic, wet gurgling sounds as his oxygen supply was cut off.
"Did she cry?" Dominic asked. "Did she ask for her mother? Did she ask why the man who promised to love her was holding her down while his vile mother struck her?"
Dominic loosened his grip just enough to allow a razor-thin gasp of air into Julian’s burning lungs.
"I'm... I'm sorry!" Julian gasped out, tears streaming down his pale cheeks, snot and saliva bubbling from his lips. "It was my mother's idea! I swear to God! It was Beatrice! She said we had to save the company! She made me do it! She told me Lily was weak and would sign if we broke her!"
"You cowardly little bastard!" Beatrice shrieked from the floor, struggling against Marcus’s iron grip. "Shut up, Julian! Shut your mouth!"
Dominic straightened up, letting Julian roll onto his side, coughing violently and clutching his bruised throat.
Dominic didn't look angry. That was the most terrifying part. A furious man was predictable; a furious man made mistakes. Dominic was ice-cold, acting with the methodical detachment of a surgeon excising a malignant tumor.
"You see, Julian," Dominic said, casually tossing the titanium crowbar onto the glass coffee table, shattering it into a million frosted spiderwebs. "Killing you right now would be an act of mercy. It would take ten seconds. You would feel a brief flash of agony, and then darkness. That is not nearly enough currency to pay the debt you incurred tonight."
Dominic turned and walked toward Beatrice, who was glaring up at him, her chest heaving with fury.
"You like deeds, Beatrice?" Dominic asked, crouching down to her eye level. "You like taking things that belong to innocent young women?"
"You're a thug," Beatrice spat, trying to summon her venom. "A low-class, gutter-born gangster. You think you can intimidate me? By morning, every bank in this city will know who you are. The police—"
Dominic pulled an encrypted satellite phone from his pocket, hit a single speed-dial button, and held it up to Beatrice’s ear on speaker.
A man’s voice answered on the second ring—shaky, cracked with terror, and gasping for breath.
"Hello? Dominic? Please... please, I did what you asked!"
Beatrice froze. Her arrogant sneer dissolved instantly. "Arthur?"
It was her husband. Arthur Vance, the patriarch of the Vance family, speaking from their private estate in Bel-Air.
"Beatrice?" Arthur wept openly over the line. "Oh God, Beatrice! Where are you? What have you and Julian done?"
"Arthur, what is happening?" Beatrice stammered, looking up at Dominic in rising horror. "Who is with you?"
"They're taking everything!" Arthur sobbed. "At 3:15 AM, the Securities and Exchange Commission executed an emergency freezing order on every single domestic account. The offshore trusts in the Caymans—hacked and drained forty minutes ago. The state attorney general just unsealed an eight-count federal indictment for bank fraud, offshore money laundering, and commercial embezzlement against Vance Enterprises! There are federal agents in our living room, Beatrice! They're putting me in handcuffs!"
"No... no, that's impossible!" Beatrice shrieked. "We had until Monday! The auditors promised—"
"The auditors work for Dominic Vance, you foolish woman!" Arthur screamed through the receiver. "They've worked for him for ten years! He owned our debt! He bought up every single note of our private loans three weeks before the wedding! He owns our house! He owns our cars! He owns the clothes on your back!"
The phone clicked. Dominic lowered the device and slipped it back into his pocket.
The room fell into a dead, suffocating silence.
Beatrice looked as though she had been struck by lightning. Her pale, powdered skin turned the color of wet chalk. Her entire life—her social status, her country club galas, her luxury penthouses, her diamonds—had vanished into thin air in under forty minutes.
"You..." Beatrice whispered, her voice barely audible. "You planned this?"
"I did not plan for you to strike my daughter, Beatrice," Dominic said, his gray eyes narrowing into razor blades. "That was your own personal suicide note. What I planned was to quietly ruin you financially, force you into bankruptcy, and buy Lily out of your family with a clean, legal annulment."
Dominic stood up to his full height, looming over both mother and son like the shadow of an executioner.
May you like
"But you changed the rules," Dominic continued, his voice dropping into a register of sheer terror. "You laid hands on my blood. And because of that... bankruptcy is only the prologue."
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