Fifty blocks north, the executive penthouse of Harrington Financial Partners had become a bunker of paranoia and toxic recrimination.
Julian Harrington stood before the floor-to-ceiling glass wall, his face illuminated by the flickering red and green indicators of financial news terminals. Outside, a blizzard was sweeping across the city, blanketing the skyscrapers in a blinding swirl of white, but inside the office, the air was hot, stale, and smelled of cold espresso and cheap cigarette smoke.
Arthur Sterling was sitting on the edge of a leather sofa, his tie undone, his fingers trembling as he sifted through a stack of legal subpoenas bearing the gold eagle seal of the Department of Justice.
"They subpoenaed the server backups from 2018, Julian," Arthur’s voice cracked with hysteria. "All of them. The deleted email archives from the Apex acquisition, the private correspondence with the state banking commissioners, the offshore accounts in Grand Cayman. Everything."
Julian did not turn around. His hands were thrust deep into his pockets, his posture rigid as an iron bar. "Who gave them the routing numbers, Arthur? Those accounts were masked through three tiers of Panamanian bearer shares. Even the federal bank examiners couldn't pierce that veil without an insider."
Arthur swallowed hard, his throat making a dry, clicking sound. "My... my brother."
Julian turned around with a terrifying, deliberate slowness. His eyes, sunken and bloodshot from three weeks of insomnia, fixed upon the lawyer like twin crosshairs.
"Leopold?" Julian asked, his voice deceptively soft.
"The Baron’s attorneys cornered Leopold at his home on Tuesday evening," Arthur stammered, pulling at his collar as if he were being strangled. "They showed him copies of the wire transfers where he took a five percent kickback on the liquidation of Thomas Vance’s patent assets. They offered him an immunity cooperation agreement. If he turned state's evidence against you, he avoids twenty years in a federal penitentiary and keeps his pension at the academy."
Julian took two steps forward, his shadow engulfing the terrified lawyer. He reached down, picked up a heavy crystal decanter from the side table, and smashed it against the edge of the obsidian desk.
The detonation of shattering crystal and amber whisky sounded like a gunshot in the confined room.
"That spineless, ink-stained parasite!" Julian roared, his chest heaving, his face contorting into an ugly mask of feral rage. "I paid for his chair at the conservatory! I financed his summer house in Martha's Vineyard! I bought his pathetic, aristocratic pedigree, and he sells me out to an old man with a cane and a girl who carried soup plates?"
Arthur curled into himself, shielding his face from flying glass. "Julian, please! We need to settle. We need to go to the Baron, offer a full release of the Vance estate debt, surrender the patents back to Clara, and propose a quiet restitution payment before the indictments are unsealed! The Winter Gala is in forty-eight hours. If this goes public during the concert—"
"I will not settle!" Julian bellowed, slamming both palms down onto the wet, liquor-stained desk. "I spent twenty-five years clawing my way to the top of this city's financial food chain. I broke steel unions, I forced municipal mayors to kiss my ring, and I dismantled multinational corporations before breakfast. Do you think I am going to bend my knee to an orphan who thinks she's an artist because she can wiggle her fingers on a keyboard?"
Julian straightened up, breathing heavily, straightening the lapels of his suit with trembling, manic energy.
"The Winter Gala is a public event," Julian said, his voice dropping into a sinister, calculated cadence. "The entire cultural and political elite of the eastern seaboard will be in that hall. The mayor, the governor, the international press, the major institutional donors."
"Julian... what are you planning?" Arthur whispered in horror.
"The Vance girl is scheduled to play the Rachmaninoff concerto," Julian sneered, a dark, venomous smile returning to his face. "The most difficult piece in the entire classical canon. It requires nerves of cold steel. If a performer loses their concentration for half a measure—if their psychological stability is fractured—the entire performance collapses into an incoherent mess of dropped notes and stuttering panic."
Julian picked up his mobile phone from the desk and dialed an encrypted number.
"Who are you calling?" Arthur asked, rising from the sofa in sheer terror.
Julian held the phone to his ear, his cold eyes gleaming with malicious intent. "I have two city councilmen and three senior members of the Symphony Hall building safety board who still owe their positions to my political contributions. If we cannot stop her legally before the concert, we will ensure that the environment inside that hall is... less than conducive to a triumph."
Julian spoke into the receiver: "It's Harrington. The municipal safety inspection scheduled for the Symphony Hall backstage complex tomorrow afternoon... proceed with the emergency electrical shutdown. We have an unconfirmed structural hazard to investigate."