"At my birthday party, my husband tied me to a ceiling beam and whipped me thirty times because I had stained his mistress’s dress. “Maybe now you’ll learn your place,” he laughed while everyone watched. I didn’t cry. When they finally cut me down, I picked up my phone and called my five gangster brothers. “Make his entire family beg for mercy,” I whispered. Then the front gates suddenly slammed shut.

Leo Sterling strolled toward the centerpiece of the room—a towering, eight-tier chocolate birthday cake topped with spun sugar that had been commissioned for me, but which Isaac had jokingly ordered the staff to dump in the garbage after my punishment.

Leo drew a silver pocketknife, carved off a neat slice of the dark chocolate, tasted it from the blade, and hummed in appreciation.

“Good sponge,” Leo murmured. He turned his eyes toward Arthur Vance, who was currently leaning against a marble pillar, clutching his left arm as if his chest were collapsing. “Arthur, you pride yourself on your logistics, don’t you? You told the regional business journal last month that without Vance Supply Lines, the entire eastern seaboard would run out of dry cement in forty-eight hours.”

Arthur didn't answer. He was breathing in heavy, ragged wheezes.

Leo pulled out his personal phone, tapping a speed-dial button and putting it on speaker.

A voice answered immediately on the other end, speaking with a heavy Dutch accent. *“Mr. Sterling. We are standing by at the Rotterdam terminal. All twelve container freighters carrying Vance aggregate are currently held under customs quarantine per your instruction.”*

“Release the quarantine?” Arthur whispered in absolute horror. “Those shipments are bound for the New York harbor project! If they miss the midnight tide, the demurrage penalties will trigger the contractual default clauses!”

“I know,” Leo replied pleasantly. He spoke into the phone: “Sink the delivery timeline, Hendrik. Redirect the freighters to our secondary dry-docks in Halifax. Cancel their maritime insurance coverage effective five minutes ago. If Arthur Vance wants his gravel, tell him he can swim to Canada and carry it back in his pockets.”

*“Understood, Mr. Sterling. The supply line is officially severed.”* The call disconnected.

“No... no, no, no,” Arthur whimpered, sliding down the pillar until he was sitting on the floor, his designer tie pulled loose. “That’s three hundred million in liquidated damages. The city will sue us into non-existence!”

“They won't sue Vance International,” Julian said smoothly, stepping over to Arthur and dropping a fresh stack of legal notices onto the old man’s lap. “The city won't have time. As the primary legal representative for the Municipal Workers Union, I have just filed an emergency injunction halting all labor on every Vance construction site across five states. We have documented seventy-two severe OSHA violations, systematic wage theft, and the intentional use of sub-grade rebar in residential high-rises.”

Julian bent down, looking directly into Arthur’s panicked eyes.

“By sunrise tomorrow, Arthur, your crane operators will walk off the job. Your concrete mixers will harden in their drums. Your subcontractors will file collective liens against your personal assets. And the Department of Justice will freeze every commercial account bearing your signature.”

Wendy Vance let out an unearthly wail, rushing toward me. She dropped to her knees, attempting to grab the hem of my ruined dress. The haughty matriarch who had spent seven years reminding me that I was an orphan, that I was lucky to eat their bread, that I was a social inferior who should be grateful for Isaac’s scraps, was now sobbing uncontrollably.

“Flora! Flora, please!” Wendy begged, her mascara running down her wrinkled cheeks in black streaks. “We are family! You are Isaac’s wife! Think of the Vance name! You can’t let your brothers do this to us! We took you in!”

I pulled my dress back from her trembling fingers.

“You didn’t take me in, Wendy,” I said, looking down at her with eyes that felt as ancient and cold as stone. “You used me. You thought my silence was the silence of a sheep. You thought because I didn’t flaunt my family’s name, I had no family at all.”

I touched the raw, bloody whip marks on my collarbone.

“Where was the Vance family when your son tied me to that beam? Where was your mercy when you laughed and told him to strike me harder so I would learn my place?”

Wendy shook her head desperately, words failing her, choking on her own saliva.