Chapter 6 - THE SOCIAL EXECUTION
Beatrice Vance was a creature of high society. To cancel her annual charity gala would mean admitting defeat and showing weakness to the elite circles she desperately clung to. So, despite being completely bankrupt, she hosted it anyway, hoping to secure a massive donation from a foreign investor to pay off the cartel.
The ballroom of the Grand Hotel was dripping in diamonds, silk, and expensive champagne.
I attended, wearing a custom-tailored Tom Ford tuxedo that Vance had procured for me. I walked through the front doors, looking nothing like the frayed mechanic Beatrice had despised. I looked exactly like what I was: a man who commanded empires in the shadows.
Beatrice spotted me near the ice sculpture. All the blood drained from her face. She grabbed Marcus by the arm, dragging him toward the security detail.
"Throw him out!" Beatrice hissed to the head of security, pointing a manicured finger at me. "He is trespassing!"
The security chief walked up to me. I calmly slipped a heavily folded, official federal document out of my tuxedo pocket. It was a JSOC blank-check warrant, signed by a sitting federal judge.
The security chief read it, paled, and took a step back, nodding respectfully to me. He turned to Beatrice. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Vance. This gentleman has absolute federal clearance. I cannot remove him."
Marcus stepped forward, his fists clenched, but he remembered the strike to his solar plexus and thought better of it.
"What are you doing here?" Marcus whispered violently.
"Just enjoying the show," I replied, taking a sip of sparkling water.
Right on cue, Miller worked his magic from the war room. The string quartet's music abruptly cut out. The massive projector screens around the ballroom, which had been displaying charity logos, flickered and changed.
The screens displayed high-definition video files.
It was footage from the Vance home security cameras. It showed Marcus and Beatrice violently shoving Emily down the basement stairs. It played the crystal-clear audio of Beatrice laughing as she hacked off my daughter's hair.
Then, the screens switched to financial documents. It showed the explicit banking trails of Marcus Vance laundering millions for the Rojas Cartel.
The ballroom descended into absolute, deafening silence. The wealthy elite of Maryland stared at the screens in utter disgust and horror.
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Beatrice let out a wailing scream, covering her face. Marcus tried to run toward the AV booth, but the damage was done.
The foreign investor they had been courting stood up, threw his champagne glass onto the floor in disgust, and walked out. The rest of the ballroom followed suit. Within five minutes, Marcus and Beatrice were left standing completely alone in an empty ballroom, their social empire burned to ash.
