Chapter 2 - The Architecture of Collateral
For five agonizing seconds,
no one at the table breathed.
The ambient sound of the restaurant outside—the faint murmur of jazz,
the clinking of wineglasses in the main dining hall—only made our private room feel more like a courtroom.
Bridget looked at Jerome,
her hand fluttering up to her chest where a diamond pendant caught the amber chandelier light.
It was a pendant Jerome had claimed was purchased as a corporate gift for an overseas vendor.
I had seen the invoice on our shared bank statement three weeks ago,
itemized under miscellaneous consulting expenses.
“Jerome,”
she whispered,
her voice losing all its venom,
sounding suddenly small and frightened,
“what does he mean?
You told me the Drayton family was merely a formality.
You said you controlled the allocations.”
Jerome did not answer her.
He could not answer her.
To answer her would mean admitting to eight of the most ruthless private equity managers in the city that he was nothing more than an ambitious manager whose entire rise had been financed by the woman whose face his mistress had just struck.
I reached down beside my chair,
picked up the slim black leather portfolio that I had brought into the room,
and placed it directly on the white linen tablecloth.
The dull thud echoed like a gunshot.
“Let us examine the allocations,
then,”
I said,
unzipping the portfolio with deliberate slowness.
“Northgate Systems requires two hundred forty million dollars before Friday afternoon at five o'clock.
If the wire is not received by the escrow agent in Delaware,
the Bellmore acquisition collapses.
Along with it,
Northgate will be forced to pay a thirty-two million dollar breakup penalty,
a penalty that will immediately trigger technical default on your existing senior debt facilities.”
Jerome’s eyes widened,
his fingers twitching against the back of his chair.
“Leona,
we do not need to air internal risk assessments here,”
he pleaded,
his voice cracking slightly.
“These gentlemen and ladies are already committed to the structure.
We are here to celebrate the partnership,
not audit the books.”
“We are here to sign,”
Arthur Pendelton,
the representative from Apex Capital,
interrupted coldly.
Arthur was sixty-two,
a veteran of three corporate debt restructurings,
and a man who had never lost a single dollar on an unhedged bet.
He looked at Jerome with utter disdain.
“And I do not sign debt agreements in rooms where junior staffers strike senior trustees,
Jerome.
Especially not trustees who are providing thirty-five percent of the primary tranche.”
“She struck me back!”
Bridget blurted out,
tears of rage finally spilling over her mascara,
running down her flushed,
marked cheek.
“You all saw it!
She assaulted me in front of everyone!
Jerome,
are you going to let her treat me like this?
After everything we did to get Northgate to this position?”
I opened the first tab of my portfolio,
pulled out a clean stack of bank statements,
and slid them across the table toward Cornelius and Arthur.
“What you did,
Miss Ford,”
I said,
my voice steady,
“was authorize seven point four million dollars in expedited payments to an entity named Asteria Global Advisory over the past four months.
An entity registered in the Cayman Islands under your sister’s maiden name.”
Bridget froze as if she had been hit by lightning.
The blood drained from her face so fast that for a moment I thought she might collapse onto the carpet.
Jerome lunged forward,
slamming his hands down on the table.
“Where did you get those?”
he roared,
dropping every shred of his practiced,
charming facade.
“Those are internal executive records!
You had no authorization to access corporate banking portals!”
“I am the majority owner of Chase Capital Holdings,
Jerome,”
I said,
meeting his furious gaze without blinking,
letting him see the twenty years of cold endurance that had led to this exact minute.
“And Chase Capital Holdings owns sixty-one percent of the voting shares of Northgate.
I do not need your authorization to inspect my own property.”
The room seemed to shrink.
The eight investors sat back in their chairs,
folding their arms,
realizing that this was not a domestic quarrel between a stressed executive and an emotional wife.
This was an execution.
May you like
And Jerome Chase had walked onto the scaffold all by himself,
holding his assistant’s hand.
