*SNAP.*
A second set of chains clamped around their ankles—the identical stainless-steel irons used for capital traitors at Leavenworth:
*SNAP-CLINK.*
The prisoners were marched down the grand central gallery into the freezing rain toward the armored tactical transport BearCats waiting in the driveway:
*SCREEECH.*
Behind them were marched the thirty-four terrified board members, escorted off the sovereign defense perimeter by armed military police, their half-eaten prime rib and birthday cake left abandoned on the table:
*CRASH-ROAR-PANT.*
The front doors of the Bloomfield Hills mansion closed behind them with an authoritative, airtight, pneumatic *THUD*.
The dining room returned to silence.
The only sound left was the sixty-cycle hum of the White Hawk’s turbine idling outside on the lawn, the steady breathing of Admiral Mercer beside me, and the rhythmic *tack… tack… tack* of Arthur Mercer’s chronometer watch on Julian’s wrist.
“And Chief Justice Arthur Sterling-Vance?”
I asked, my voice flat, cold, holding forty decibels of compressed polar diamond.
“Chief Justice Arthur Sterling-Vance,” Marcus Cooper answered, every syllable dropping like an iron depth-charge into fifty fathoms of dark water:
“The elder patriarch of the Vance-Sterling dynasty.
Richard Mitchell’s secret patron.
The man who orchestrated Richard’s marriage to you eighteen years ago.
The man who approved deploying the Au Sable ravine battery to permanently disable Julian and force a lifelong conservatorship default over Conduit Ten.
