Chapter 5 - The Reckoning
The executive boardroom on the fiftieth floor of Emerald Tower was lit only by the glare of the Manhattan skyline reflecting off the floor-to-ceiling glass windows.
Twelve men and women in immaculate designer suits sat around the massive black granite conference table in absolute, terrified silence. They had been dragged out of their beds at midnight, summoned by an emergency edict that brooked no argument.
At the head of the table sat Jason Miller.
He hadn't taken off his coat. He stood at the edge of the room, staring out at the frozen river below, his hands clasped behind his back.
The door opened, and Marcus Vance—vice president of regional asset management, a sleek, silver-haired executive in a $4,000 Brioni suit—hurried into the room, looking flustered and indignant.
“Jason? What is the meaning of this?” Marcus demanded, adjusting his tie as he took his seat. “I was in the middle of a sleep study in Connecticut. Calling an emergency board meeting at midnight without an agenda is a violation of—”
Jason turned around.
The look on Jason’s face silenced Marcus mid-sentence.
Jason walked slowly toward the table, tossing a thick manila folder directly onto the black granite in front of Marcus. The folder slid across the smooth surface and stopped against Marcus’s water glass.
“Open it,” Jason said.
Marcus frowned, shooting an uneasy glance at the other board members. He opened the folder. Inside were property management ledgers, rent hike notices, payroll deductions from the Queens textile wholesaler, and medical collection notices bearing a familiar name.
Adams, Sarah-Jane.
Marcus’s face lost all its color in three seconds flat.
“I... I don't know what this is,” Marcus stammered, his voice rising in panic. “Routine property optimization. Standard yield adjustments approved by the—”
“You evicted a dying woman,” Jason interrupted. His voice was terrifyingly soft, almost a whisper, yet it echoed in the cavernous room like thunder. “You increased her rent by forty percent on a decrepit tenement apartment in the Lower East Side, docked her wages at a sweatshop my capital firm acquired, and pushed her into a public clinic where she died alone three nights ago.”
“Jason, listen to me,” Marcus stood up, his hands shaking. “In property management, you can’t look at individual cases! We have institutional investors to satisfy! We have quarterly targets! If we made exceptions for every sick—”
Before Marcus could finish his sentence, Jason moved with the speed and violence of a striking cobra.
He vaulted across the conference table, grabbing Marcus by the lapels of his expensive Brioni suit, hoisting him clear out of his chair, and slamming him down against the granite surface so hard the water glasses rattled.
The board members gasped, several women leaping backward in horror.
“Don't talk to me about quarterly targets,” Jason snarled inches from Marcus’s terrified face, his eyes burning with a demonic ice-blue fury. “Don't talk to me about institutional investors. That woman was the mother of my children. And your spreadsheet efficiency just murdered her.”
“Jason! Please!” Marcus gasped, clutching Jason’s wrists. “I didn't know! I swear to God I didn't know who she was!”
“That’s the point, Marcus,” Jason whispered, his voice trembling with a grief so immense it defied description. “You didn't care who she was. You didn't care who anyone was, as long as your bonus check cleared at the end of the quarter. And neither did I.”
Jason shoved Marcus back into his chair with such force that the executive tumbled backward onto the floor, gasping for air.
Jason straightened his cuffs, looking around the stunned, horrified faces of the board members.
“Effective immediately,” Jason said, his voice ringing through the room with absolute, tyrannical authority, “every residential property owned by Miller Meridian Capital within the five boroughs of New York is having its rent frozen at 2021 levels. Every eviction proceeding currently in the courts is canceled. Any tenant facing medical hardship will have their rent waived indefinitely.”
“Jason, you can’t do that!” an older board member protested, standing up. “That will cost the firm hundreds of millions in projected valuation! The shareholders will sue!”
Jason turned his cold, dead-eyed gaze onto the protestor.
“Let them sue,” Jason said. “And if any one of you has a problem with my leadership, clean out your desk before sunrise, or I will personally ensure you never work in finance, real estate, or banking again in this hemisphere.”
May you like
Not a single person spoke.
Jason turned his back on them, walked out of the boardroom, and left the financial empire he had built burning to the ground behind him.
