Chapter 12 - The Matriarch's Gambit
Lady Eleanor Montgomery did not travel without an entourage of three black limousines and four personal bodyguards.
She arrived at the Vance Penthouse smelling of expensive lavender and centuries of inherited contempt.
Her granddaughter, Vivienne, had been ruined by Serafina’s public auction of the Montgomery assets.
Vivienne was now living under court supervision in an upstate clinic, stripped of her jewels and her social pedigree.
Eleanor walked into the sunlit parlor with the slow, deliberate grace of a cobra.
She did not offer a hand.
She did not bow her head.
She sat on the white velvet settee and looked at Serafina with cold, rheumy eyes.
"You think you have won because you destroyed a spineless boy and a foolish girl, Serafina," Eleanor said, resting her withered hands on an ivory cane.
"I did not destroy them, Lady Eleanor," Serafina replied coldly, remaining standing.
"I merely stripped them of the stolen robes they had no right to wear."
Eleanor let out a dry, raspy laugh that sounded like dead leaves scratching against pavement.
"Dorian was a peasant who smelled of ambition."
"We knew he would falter the moment you applied pressure."
"He was an instrument, my dear child."
"A diversion while Christian consolidated the external debts of your father’s European fleet."
Serafina took a single step forward, her presence towering over the old woman.
"You financed Christian’s return using the Montgomery family trust."
"You used your granddaughter as bait to draw Dorian’s wandering eye and keep me preoccupied with domestic humiliation."
Eleanor’s smile thinned into a razor’s edge.
"Vivienne played her part willingly."
"She thought she was getting a handsome billionaire."
"She did not know Christian had written the script that would leave Dorian penniless and hand the shipping corridors to us."
"Christian now controls forty-one percent of the offshore voting shares through the Lucerne syndicate."
"Tomorrow morning at the Harbor Summit, he will present his claim to the board of governors."
"You have the domestic empire, Serafina."
"But without the international shipping rights, your ships cannot leave port without paying our tariffs."
Serafina looked down at the matriarch with utter pity.
"You spent fifty years building your family’s prestige, Eleanor."
"And you have gambled it all on a bastard son who despised our grandfather until the day he died."
"Leave this room before I instruct Marcus to toss your heirloom cane into the bay."
Eleanor stood up slowly, leaning heavily upon the ivory head of her stick.
"We shall see who drowns tomorrow, heiress."
May you like
"Your father broke my brother’s heart forty years ago."
"I have waited half a lifetime to see a Vance woman beg on her knees."
