Chapter 2 - The Fall of the House of Sterling
Hook: Within sixty seconds, a billionaire dynasty is completely erased from existence with a single phone call.
"Richard, stand up!" Victoria hissed, her pride still blinding her to the cliff she was standing on. "Why are you groveling? Look at her! She’s a cripple in a dirty hoodie! She’s lying! She doesn't own anything!"
"Shut up! Shut your mouth, you foolish woman!" Richard screamed, tears streaming down his face. He turned back to Seraphina, slamming his head against the marble. "Madam Permone! Please! My wife is ignorant! She doesn't know who you are! She didn't know you survived the assassination attempt in Europe! Please, spare my family!"
The crowd of wealthy onlookers gasped. The assassination attempt? The Sovereign? The rumors were true. The elusive matriarch of the Permone Syndicate, the woman who pulled the strings of prime ministers and presidents, wasn't dead. She was sitting in a dented wheelchair in the middle of their city.
Seraphina didn't look at Richard’s desperate displays of submission. She reached into her oversized hoodie pocket and pulled out a burner phone. The screen was cracked, but it still worked. She dialed a single, three-digit number.
"Erase them," she said simply into the receiver.
"Madam, please!" Richard shrieked, crawling toward her like a dog. "We have a son! We have a daughter! Don't destroy us!"
Ring. Ring. Ring.
Suddenly, Richard’s phone in his jacket pocket began to buzz frantically. Then Victoria’s phone buzzed. Then the hotel’s main financial terminal behind the front desk began to emit a high-pitched warning alarm.
Victoria frantically pulled her diamond-encrusted phone from her clutch. A notification from her private bank popped up: [ACCOUNT TERMINATED. BALANCE: $0.00]
"No... no, this is a glitch," Victoria stammered, her fingers trembling as she refreshed the app. "My money... my inheritance... it's gone?"
Richard’s phone rang. It was his chief financial officer. He answered on speakerphone, his hand shaking so badly he almost dropped it.
"Richard! It's over!" the CFO screamed through the speaker, his voice cracking with panic. "The bank just called in our loans! All of them! Every single line of credit has been frozen! The government just issued an emergency asset seizure warrant for tax evasion and money laundering! The stocks... oh my God, our stock is at zero! We are bankrupt, Richard! We owe four billion dollars! The police are at the office right now with handcuffs!"
The phone went dead.
Richard stared at the screen, his eyes lifeless. In less than sixty seconds, everything he had built, generations of wealth, had been vaporized into nothingness.
"You see, Victoria," Seraphina said, her voice calm, almost maternal in its gentleness, which made it all the more terrifying. "Wealth is an illusion. You thought that white dress made you a queen. You thought my wheelchair made me trash. But the truth is, you only exist because I allowed you to breathe my air."
Victoria fell to her knees, the white silk of her dress dragging through the dirt and oil from the crashed sedan. She looked at Seraphina, her arrogance finally shattering, replaced by a primal, suffocating terror.
"Please..." Victoria sobbed, reaching out toward Seraphina’s sneakers. "Please, I'm sorry. I'll do anything. I'll clean your shoes. I'll be your slave. Please don't take our lives."
Seraphina looked down at her. "Marcus."
"Yes, Madam," Marcus Vance stood up instantly, his eyes cold and sharp.
"Throw them out," Seraphina commanded. "And make sure no hotel, no restaurant, and no shelter in this hemisphere ever admits them. Let them see what it feels like to be the 'trash' they so despise."
"Right away, Madam," Marcus signaled to the heavily armed security team.
As Richard and Victoria were dragged kicking and screaming out of the broken glass doors into the cold rain outside, the remaining guests in the lobby stood paralyzed, terrified to even breathe loud enough to draw the Sovereign’s attention.
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But Seraphina wasn't finished. She turned her violet eyes toward the hotel manager, who was hiding behind the marble pillar, sweating through his tuxedo.
"Now," Seraphina smiled, a chilling, beautiful sight. "Let's talk about why my wheelchair's brakes were deliberately sabotaged tonight."
