From Betrayal to Billions

CHAPTER 14

The Foster family office was a monument to old money and old grudges. Floor to ceiling windows offered a clear view of the city, but Marcus Foster fixed his attention on a single sheet of vellum paper on his desk…his uncle’s last will and testament. A copy, of course. The real one was locked away, what should have been his.

“It’s an insult. This is what it is.” Marcus snarled. He crushed a Cuban cigar ashtray, the lit ashes dying with a hissing sound. “A final, clear slap in the face from a senile old man.”

Matthew, his personal assistant, stood with the fallen posture of a man who had delivered too much bad news. “The will is inaccessible, sir. Placed under heavy security with the firm’s executor. But….there is a condition.”

Marcus snapped his head up, with an intense interest in his eyes. “What condition?”

“The heir…this Jace….must hold the controlling shares of Parkinson Group for one full calendar year. If he fails, if the company’s value reduces or he is forced to sell….everything goes back to you. As the nearest Foster relative.”

A slow, poisonous smile spread across Marcus’s face. It was a c***k in the perfection. A flaw in the design.

“Then we don not steal it from him,” Marcus murmured, his mind already racing through the plans of ruin. “We make him drop it. We make the shares so hot they burn his hands.” He stood and paced before the window like a caged lion. “Leak the Parkinson Group’s internal financial projections for the Montgomery Medical bid. Every weakness, every overvaluation. Send it anonymously to our friends at Bio-tech and Helixcorp. Let them lowball the offer. When the stock reduces on the news of a failed bid, our dear cousin will panic. He will have no choice but to sell to stop the bleeding.”

“And if he doesn’t?” Matthew asked, “If he is stubborn?”

Marcus stopped pacing with his reflection, a cold hard mask in the glass. “Then I will persuade him. Some people don’t understand the language of Buisness. They only understand fear. Now get out.”

The moment the door clicked shut, Marcus’s phone vibrated with an alert and he almost dismissed it until he saw the head line and blurry photo.

‘BROKE AND BROKEN: JACE PARKER SPOTTED IN THRIFT STORE AFTER DIVORCE’

In shock, Marcus zoomed in on the image and there he was, Jonathan Parkinson’s great hope. Dressed in a faded hoodie with his shoulders fallen and his face hollowed by what looked like defeat. A nobody. A gutter rat who had somehow won the lottery.

‘Perfect,’ Marcus thought, a plan solidifying with brutal clarity. ‘Let him think he has won. Let him comfortable. Then we cut the floor from under him.’

Across the city, in the steel and glass heart of the Parkinson Group headquarters, the air was a different kind of cold….calculated and sterile.

Jace stood with his back to the room and watched the tiny figures of people and cars scurry far below. He no longer wore the faded hoodie. He was fully clad in a suit the cost more than most cars, tailored to fit the new, harder lines of his body. The transformation was complete, at least on the outside.

“He took the bait,” a smooth calm voice called out excitedly.

My Reynolds stood by the mahogany conference table with a tablet in his hands. The wall of black suited lawyers had dispersed with their work done.

“How did he look?” Jace asked quietly.

“Mr Montgomery?” Reynolds asked. “Confident, at first. Then….moist.”

Jace smiled slowly. “Good.”

“He signed the amended terms. Three hundred million upfront. Twenty percent equity stake in Montgomery Medical. And the personal guarantee against Finn Withman’s offshore accounts.” Reynolds placed the tablet on the table. “It is extortion, sir. Brilliant, but extortion.”

“It is justice,” Jade corrected and finally turned around. His eyes were no longer hollow. They were shining bright, taking in every detail of the empire he now commanded. “They hid the data on those clinical trials, Reynolds. They buried six people to protect their profit margin. This isn’t a takeover. It is a detention.

“And the cousin?” Reynolds inquired. “Our intelligence suggests Marcus Foster is already moving. He intends to leak our internal data to devalue the stock and force your hand.”

Jace widened his smile coldly. “I am counting on it.”

Reynold raised his eyebrows in shock. “Sir?”

“Marcus sees the one year clause as my weakness. He thinks he can spook me, a poor little orphan suddenly handed a fortune.” Jace walked to the desk and picked up a heavy crystal flower flower cup and felt its weight. “He doesn’t realize it is his. That clause is the trap, not the prize. Let him leak the data. Let him think he is engineering a crash.”

Reynolds widened his eyes as understanding dawned on him. “You want the stock price to fall.”

“I want it to plummet.” Jace nodded as his voice dropped to a deadly whisper. “I want every weak investor and every doubting board member to sell in a blind panic. And while they are selling, we will be buying. Every single share. At a bargain price.”

The clarity and brilliance of the plan left Reynold momentarily silent. Jace wasn’t just playing defense, he was using his enemy’s greatest weapon to fuel his own army.

“By the time Marcus realizes he is not strangling my control but strengthening it,” Jace continued, placing the flower cup down. “I won’t own forty nine percent of Montgomery Medical. I will own it all. And I will own seventy percent of Parkinson Group. He will have handed me absolute power on a silver platter.”

Just then, Reynolds’s tablet lip up. A news alert blared across the screen…

‘BREAKING: PARKINSON GROUP INTERNAL DATA LEAKED. STOCK PLUMMET 18% IN AFTER HOURS TRADING.’

Jace didn’t even look at it. He simply picked up the glass of scotch Reynolds had poured for him earlier.

“Right on schedule,” he said, toasting to the city skyline. “Let the panic begin.”

Reynolds smiled slightly. “And Mr Foster? He will likely attempt to make contact. To gloat, or to threaten.”

Jace took a sip of the amber colored liquid and let the warmth spread through him. “Let him come. I want to see the look on his face when he realizes he is not the predator in this jungle. He is the prey.”

He turned back to the window with a satisfied look on his face as he looked over the glittering city he was about to own completely.

“The game is just beginning, cousin.”