The Ultimatum

Kael

A single bulb lit up the room, giving it that airy interrogating room. I sat on a hard bench, my hands resting in my lap. The handcuffs had been removed, but the red, marks on my wrists remained as a constant reminder of how I had been dragged out of the Vance estate like a common thief.

The door unlocked, I didn't lift my head right away. I watched the rain dripping from the hem of my coat onto the floorboards.

Banjo stepped inside.

He didn't have his security team with him this time. He was alone. His face looked hollowed out the sharp edges of his jaw tighter than usual, his eyes bloodshot and shadowed by dark circles under his eyes.

He didn't sit down in the chair across from me. He stood beside the table, resting one hand on the cold desk, looking down at me with a mix of icy detachment and a strange, flickering exhaustion.

"You look remarkably calm for someone facing twenty years in a Swiss federal prison, Merinda," he said, his voice rough, dry, and flat.

I slowly raised my eyes to meet his. My left cheek still ached with a heat from where his hand had struck me hours ago, but my eyes remained completely clear, cold, and unbothered.

"When you've already lost your freedom for three years, Banjo, a cell doesn't feel much different," I replied, my tone completely even, devoid of any anger or desperation. "Why are you here? Did you come to watch the police put me in chains?"

Banjo reached inside his coat, pulled out a folder, and tossed it onto the table between us.

"I'm giving you one last exit," Banjo said, his voice dropping into a low tone. "The Federal Prosecutor is in the next room right now, holding the formal indictment for grand corporate spying and high level treason. The evidence from Lawson Global’s server is enough to ensure you never set foot outside until you're an old woman."

I looked at the black folder lying on the table, but I didn't reach for it. "And what is the price of your mercy, Banjo?"

"Sign what's inside," he commanded, leaning over the table. "It's a full, unconditional divorce agreement. In it, you forfeit every claim to the Vance estate, waive all future spousal support, and sign over the complete land deed of St. Judes to Vance Holdings."

A bitter smile curved at the bottom of my lips. "And if I sign? You just let a 'dangerous corporate spy' walk free?"

"If you sign," Banjo said, his jaw clenching hard, "I will instruct my legal team to withdraw the formal complaint. We will state that the leaked server files were a internal technical error. You will be quietly escorted to the airport, given a one way ticket out of Switzerland, and you will never return. You walk away with your freedom, and Tahlia gets the quiet coastal sanctuary she needs to survive."

I stared at him, feeling a deep, profound sadness not for myself, but for the tragic blindness of the man standing before me. He was bargaining with my life, holding a twenty year prison sentence over my head like a hammer, all to secure a piece of Australian dirt for a woman who was actively destroying his empire from within.

"You really think you've won, don't you?" I asked softly, my voice barely a whisper in the room. "You think if you sign this paper and hand St. Judes to Tahlia, everything goes back to being perfect. Your little princess gets her dream house, and the inconvenient contract wife disappears into the fog."

Banjo’s eyes flared with a sudden flash of irritation. "Don't lecture me about victory, Merinda. You have no information here. You have no money, no legal team, and no family left to rescue you. You are sitting in a police basement in Zurich because your greed destroyed your own life."

He tapped his fingers against the folder, "Sign the papers," he growled, his voice trembling with a desperate tension. "Save yourself from a Swiss prison. Give up the deed and take your freedom. You have five minutes before the prosecutor walks through that door to file the charges."

I looked down at the folder.

Inside was the paper that would strip me of my mother's legacy, hand my family's sacred land to Tahlia, and officially end my three year nightmare as Banjo Vance’s hidden wife. He thought he was trapping me between a wall of steel and a wall of paper. He thought I was terrified of the court.

Slowly, I reached out my hand and pulled the folder toward me, he truly believed he had broken me, he believed that when faced with a real prison, the penniless girl would break and bow.

I opened the folder. The divorce decree sat on top, I picked up the pen, "Five minutes, Merinda," Banjo reminded me, his voice carrying a triumphant satisfaction. "Make the right choice."

I looked up at him, my eyes locking onto his with a terrifying stillness that made the smirk die instantly on his face.

I set the pen back down on the table without writing a single letter. Then, with a smooth, firm motion, I closed the leather folder and pushed it straight back across the table toward him.

Banjo froze, his brow furrowing in absolute shock. "What are you doing?"

"I'm not signing," I said, my voice steady, clear, and ringing through the room. "I will take the court date, Banjo."

Banjo’s face went pale, his eyes widening in sheer disbelief. "Are you out of your mind?! If that prosecutor walks in here, I cannot pull those charges back! You will be locked in a maximum security remand cell by nightfall!"

"Then bring him in," I whispered, leaning backwars, my eyes burning with a cold, unyielding fire. "Bring the prosecutor, Banjo. Bring the media. Bring the European Banking Commission. Let's take this frame up to a high security Swiss courtroom, under oath, in front of the entire international press."

Banjo stepped back, his chest heaving as if he had just been hit in the ribs with a lead pipe. "You're bluffing you have nothing"

Before he could finish his sentence, the door of the holding room swung wide open.

It wasn't the Swiss prosecutor who stepped inside.

It was a tall man in a navy blue suit, carrying a briefcase stamped with a gold crest. It was the master seal of the Zurich Supreme Court's Chief Magistrate.

Behind the lawyer walked two high ranking Federal Marshals.

The chief attorney stepped directly between Banjo and me, bowing his head toward me with deep, absolute respect.

"Forgive the delay, Miss Kael," the lawyer said in a feezing, high level German accent, ignoring Banjo completely as he opened his briefcase. "The international immunity injunction has just been signed by the High Court. The charges brought by Vance Enterprises have been officially dismissed due to systemic evidence tampering."

Banjo stood paralyzed, his voice completely failing him as he stared at the legal documents in the lawyer's hands. "Dismissed? Systemic evidence what are you talking about?!"

The chief lawyer turned slowly, looking at Banjo with a cold, professional disdain.

"Mr. Vance," the lawyer stated flatly, "we are not here to process your wife. We are here to serve you. The Kael Syndicate has just filed a formal motion for global corporate asset seizure against Vance Enterprises and your chief butler, Jarrah Thorne, has just been taken into federal custody at the airport.”