Chapter 8 - THE SHADOW OF GARY’S PASTWhile Ethan and his team celebrated the rebirth of the Bellweather House, across town in a fluorescent-lit holding cell at the Franklin Police Department, Gary Mercer was discovering that tyrants rarely have true friends when their power evaporates.
His phone had been buzzing nonstop since midnight. First, it was his mortgage company alerting him to a failed automatic payment. Then, it was his luxury car lease company notifying him that his vehicle registration was flagged for repossession pending corporate fraud investigations.
And finally, the text messages from his former "friends" and sycophants in the restaurant industry.
“Sorry, Gary, but corporate says we can't be associated with the embezzlement charges right now. Don't call this number again.”
Gary slammed his palm against the metal table of the holding cell, his face twisted in bitter, unrepentant fury. He didn't think he was wrong. In his warped, narcissistic mind, he was simply a victim of an ungrateful system—and of an eccentric billionaire who chose to dress like a beggar to entrap him.
“You haven't won yet, Cole,” Gary muttered to the empty concrete walls, his eyes bloodshot and wild. “You think you own everything? You don't know the half of what’s buried under the Heritage Table Group.”
Little did Gary know, his parting threat wasn't just the bitter delusion of a desperate man.
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Back at Cole Hospitality headquarters, Daniel Price had just uncovered an encrypted file buried deep within the acquired corporate archives—a file that predated Gary Mercer entirely, pointing to a much larger, systemic financial fraud that went all the way back to the original founders of the Heritage Table Group.
And the man whose signature was stamped on the very first page of that fraudulent ledger was none other than Gary’s former mentor—a man currently sitting on the board of directors of a competing hospitality giant in Chicago.
