Chapter 18 - The London SyndicateTen minutes later, the double doors of my study swung open.
Marcus Vance walked in with the polished, predatory swagger of a man who had never heard the word 'no' in his life. He was impeccably tailored in a bespoke charcoal suit, his silver hair combed back with military precision, and a thin, sardonic smile playing on his lips.
"Daniel," Vance said, walking uninvited across the room and dropping a thick leather-bound dossier onto my desk. "I must say, your little philanthropic crusade has made quite a splash in European financial markets."
I didn't invite him to sit down. I remained seated behind my desk, my hands clasped together, my expression an unreadable mask of corporate coldness.
"You're trespassing, Marcus," I said evenly. "And your firm is currently under federal investigation. If you don't walk back down that elevator in the next two minutes, I'll have federal marshals waiting for you in the lobby."
Vance chuckled softly, pulling out the chair opposite my desk and sitting down anyway. He crossed one leg over the other, resting his hands on the armrests.
"Threats don't work on me, Daniel. We aren't playing playground games anymore," Vance said, leaning forward. "You thought you dismantled Richard's operation by seizing the Boston lab and freezing the domestic accounts. But you missed the primary holding node."
He tapped the leather dossier with a manicured fingernail.
"Project Apex," Vance said, pronouncing the words with deliberate slowness. "The core genetic synthesis patents aren't registered in Delaware or New York. They're held by a shell corporation in Liechtenstein under an irrevocable trust. And according to the legacy provisions signed by your uncle three days before his estate was frozen, those patents revert directly to Vanguard Global Holdings if the domestic manufacturing chain is ever disrupted."
I narrowed my eyes. "Which means..."
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"Which means," Vance smiled, baring his teeth, "every single dose of the pediatric biologic serum your foundation is currently distributing across municipal hospitals is legally classified as stolen intellectual property. We can slap an international injunction on your foundation by tomorrow morning, shutting down every clinic from New York to Zurich."
The room grew dead silent. The threat was absolute. If Vance locked down the synthesis patents, the foundation couldn't manufacture or distribute a single vial of the serum—leaving thousands of children, including Lily, back at the mercy of respiratory failure.
