Chapter 9 - The Precipice of Freedom
Marcus froze.
The heavy glass door of the private office clicked open behind Liam.
Two men in charcoal suits and an investigator wearing a state police windbreaker walked into the room, followed by Arthur Vance. In the investigator's hand was a manila folder containing an emergency arrest warrant signed by an administrative judge thirty minutes prior.
“Marcus Drake?” the lead investigator said, pulling a gold badge from his jacket pocket. “Step away from the desk and place your hands behind your back.”
The facade collapsed completely. The aristocratic, untouchable scion of the Drake family shattered into pieces right before Liam’s eyes. Marcus scrambled out of his chair, backing up against the panoramic glass window overlooking the East River.
“Wait! This is a misunderstanding! Liam, tell them! Tell them we’re business partners!” Marcus shrieked, his voice climbing into a panicked, high-pitched whine that bounced pathetic and shrill off the glass walls. “Liam, we were brothers! I covered for you! I took care of you!”
Liam stood up. He stood tall, his six-foot-two frame towering over the desk, his spine completely straight. He looked at Marcus Drake not with hatred, not with rage, but with the utter indifference one feels toward an insect crawling across a sidewalk.
“I was never your brother, Marcus,” Liam said quietly. “I was just a trophy you kept in a cage to make yourself feel like a king.”
The state investigator stepped forward, grabbed Marcus by the arm, spun him around against the glass, and clicked the steel handcuffs over his wrists.
Marcus struggled, his expensive linen shirt tearing slightly at the shoulder seam. As they pulled him away from the window toward the door, his foot caught the leg of the chair, his right boot kicking out awkwardly into the aisle.
The oxblood leather caught the light. The silver skull buckle gleamed.
Liam looked down at the boot.
For ten years, that piece of leather had represented the absolute ruin of his life. It had represented the phantom corpse of Bear Mountain, the terrifying threat of Sing Sing, the humiliation of a broken spirit, and the sickening fear that he was unworthy of his wife and child.
Liam reached out his right hand, stopped the investigator for a brief second, and stepped into Marcus’s path.
Marcus looked up at him through tears of pure, humiliated rage. “You’ll pay for this, Liam. My family has judges in their pockets. I’ll be out on bail by midnight! I will burn your life to ash!”
Liam leaned in close. He looked straight into Marcus’s bloodshot eyes.
“You’re never getting out, Marcus,” Liam said softly. “Because once the state opens your books on that Queens development, they’re going to find the structural fraud, the bank perjury, and the offshore wire transfers. You aren't just an extortionist. You’re a thief. And for the rest of your life, whenever you look at a pair of leather boots, you’re going to remember that a three-year-old girl took down your entire empire with one sentence.”
Liam stepped aside.
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The investigators dragged Marcus Drake out of the corner office, his boots dragging uselessly against the plush carpet as the elevator doors closed on his gilded life forever.
***
