Chapter 6: The Fall of Vance Energy

Kaelen's POV 

In Melbourne, the rain had finally ceased, so that the sky just before dawn was the colour of a bruised plum; fifty stories down on the asphalt, the streetlights reflected off the wet pavement as if it were spilled ink.

I was in my corner office at Vance Global, the glass cold against my forehead, holding a glass of Scotch I hadn't touched for hours. 

The door of the boardroom behind me was slammed open, the leather chairs scraping noisily against the hardwood.

"He's still in the room," barked Arthur Vance, my uncle and senior board director, into his phone. He shut the door with a loud metallic click, the sound echoing like a gunshot in the quiet room.

“Kaelen, turn around and look at the board!” I stayed where I was because I didn't want to turn around; turning around would have meant looking at the monitors fixed to the wall, which showed the trading halts, and that meant facing the red ticker symbols scrolling without interruption across the bottom of the screen.

VANCE ENERGY SUBSIDIARY CHAPTER 11 FILING APPROVED.

VALUATION DROP: $1.4 BILLION LOST IN OVERNIGHT TRADING.

“Seven hundred million dollars worth of shareholder equity had disappeared before sunrise,” he said, his voice trembling with a dangerous blend of panic and anger. 

He moved up behind me and placed his hand on my shoulder without showing any warmth. 

The trading algorithms were disposed of in batches of fifty thousand beginning at midnight. The private encryption keys were obtained directly from your personal workstation, Kaelen, namely your penthouse IP.

“I know where the keys originated from, Arthur," I said, my voice dull and lifeless. I had a slow drink of the Scotch, letting the burning sensation cover my throat, even though it provided no relief from the empty, icy hole in my stomach.

"So where is she?" Arthur demanded, leaning forward to my vision and his face turning red. 

"Where is the girl you married? The board wants her in police custody by noon, and the Federal Police have already started reviewing the server logs!”

"She's gone."

"Gone?" Arthur let out a sharp, disbelieving sound.

How could you let her go? She was a contract bride! You've brought a nobody into our inner circle, given her access to our proprietary energy algorithms, and as a result, she has ruined us! She was a mercenary spy who had been planted by our rivals, and you allowed her to walk out the front door with a suitcase full of our lifeblood!

A mercenary spy.

The words remained in the bland air, heavy and poisonous.

I shut my eyes and at once saw Valkyrie standing in the dark motel room in St. Kilda a few hours ago; I saw her wet raven hair, the dark shadows under her eyes, and the small pocket knife quivering in her pale hand. 

I recalled the cold, sharp anger in her voice as she advised me to keep away from her sister.

You threw me into a thunderstorm without even thinking about it... You simply got rid of me.

A ghostly pain constricted my chest, so sharp that it caused my knuckles to go white as I held the glass. 

For a short and terribly painful moment after I had discovered those hospital records in the safe belonging to my mother, I allowed myself to hope. I had driven through the storm to St. Kilda, thinking that she was the victim, that my mother had arranged all of it, and that Valkyrie was innocent.

But logic is a harsh and merciless master.

My mother was indeed ruthless, and she had obtained Chloe’s medical records, true enough; but my mother didn’t have the technical ability to extract custom algorithmic encryption tokens from my personal workstation. 

My mother didn't know the secondary passcodes for Vance Energy's off-grid servers.

No one else knew those passcodes; the only person who sat with me well into the night, watching me as I typed them, ran her soft fingers through my hair while I was working.

Valkyrie.

She has deceived me by posing as the sensitive and devoted wife, employing her sister's illness as a sorrowful past event to weaken my defenses, and staying in position until the exact moment when Vance Energy launched its main renewable grid in order to cut us off and sell us to the highest bidder. 

The hospital records that my mother had were most likely merely another item of Valkyrie's collateral, a story that she had made up in case she ever was caught.

Inside me, my grief became harder and turned into a cold, dense mass of bitterness.

"I won't get very far," I said slowly, and turned to face my uncle. The image of the red market tickers shone in my eyes. "The Federal Police aren't needed because Vance Global looks after its own betrayals."

Arthur said to Kaelen, "The board will be voting on a motion of no confidence in your chairmanship at nine in the morning," with the tone of his voice becoming a little more sympathetic. 

You won't merely lose the subsidiary if you don't recover the assets that have been stolen or show who purchased them; you'll lose the whole company that your father founded.

"Leave me, Arthur."

"Kaelen"

"Leave!" My voice burst across the boardroom like thunder, and the full force of it made my uncle go silent. 

He pushed the tie, straightened it, and then moved out of the room, closing the heavy door behind him.

When I was on my own, I went over to my desk and took my encrypted satellite phone. I then entered a short code which linked me directly to my personal head of security, Marcus.

On the first ring, Marcus replied, "We've secured the other server nodes. The leak has been contained, but the damage has already been done."

I ignored the servers, looking out at the grey morning in Melbourne. Did you put the physical tracker on her station wagon before she left St. Kilda?

Yes, Mr. Vance; a micro-transponder is fastened to the rear subframe of the Ford Falcon, and it is now heading west along the coast.

I ordered that a distance of two miles be kept, my jaw tightening into a rigid line. We were not to fight it; it must think that it had escaped and should build up its little sanctuary wherever it is hiding.

OK, shall we draw up the legal warrants for her arrest?

"No," I whispered as I watched a single drop of condensation race down the glass window, "there won't be any police. When I recover what she stole from me, lawyers won't be involved."

I hung up and dropped the phone onto the desk.

I reached down and took the wedding band from the top drawer of my desk, my fingers briefly touching the cold, smooth silver of it since Valkyrie had abandoned the ring. I picked it up and rolled the metal between my thumb and forefinger.

I loved her. Heaven help me, I loved her more than life itself, and that love was the weakness which had almost ruined my empire.

I put the ring into the pocket of my vest, directly over my heart, so that the cold metal could cause a burning sensation against my ribs.

The chiming of the phone at my desk indicated an urgent internal notification. I pressed the speaker button and asked, "What is it?"

"Mr. Vance," my senior analyst said, "there's an anomaly on the private line," his voice tense with anxiety. 

The offshore shell company that bought the leaked Vance Energy algorithms... has just carried out a second transfer.

I leaned over the desk and asked, "Where are they routing the funds?"

The strange thing is that they aren't transferring the capital to a bank in a foreign country; instead, they've used our own liquidated assets to buy a 5 per cent controlling interest in Vance Global itself.

My blood ran cold. 

"Who authorized the trade?"

The transaction was carried out by means of an old and inactive family trust protocol, sir, one which calls for a primary Vance bloodline biometric signature.