CHAPTER 4: THE AUDIT OF THE EMBALMING BAY
Marisol Bromel let out an ear-piercing, animalistic shriek, backing away from the railing toward the executive bathroom:
*“THAD! CALL UNCLE ARTHUR! CALL THE SUPREME COURT! THEY ARE DESTROYING THE PARLOR!”*
*CLACK.*
Two SOG tactical operators moved up the grand staircase in fluid, synchronized, terrifying mechanical velocity:
Their gloved hands caught Marisol by her cashmere sweater and Talia Brennan by her silk collar, spun their frames one hundred and eighty degrees against the upper mahogany wainscoting with three hundred pounds of linear kinetic leverage, and snapped double-locking stainless-steel transport restraints around their wrists with two definitive, echoing cracks:
*SNAP-SNAP.*
Talia wept into the wood, her designer skirt tearing along the hem:
“I am an attorney! I have statutory immunity under client representation!”
“You have zero immunity under Title Eighteen, Section Twenty-Three-Eighty-One: Capital High Treason, Counselor,” United States Attorney Marcus Cooper rumbled as he ascended the stairs:
“We unsealed your encrypted communications logs with Vaduz forty-five minutes ago.”
“We audited the twelve shell companies you registered in Delaware to launder the subterranean excavation rights.”
“And we have the certified shipping manifests for the contraband renal specimen currently decomposing inside Adelaide Bromel’s body.”
Thaddius Bromel did not run.
He stood pinned against his mahogany desk on the second floor, his chest heaving, his silver tie crooked, his hands trembling violently as Dr. Priyanka Oay set the Toughbook terminal flat atop his leather blotter:
*CLINK.*
“Look at the telemetry, Thad,” Dr. Oay commanded.
Her voice had no pity:
“Your mother has been in complete hyperacute vascular rejection since zero-seven-hundred hours.”
“The organ your uncle bought through his Swiss syndicate was harvested from an un-indexed medical prison in Eastern Europe.”
“It was ischemic before it cleared customs in Atlanta.”
“And the reason your mother’s personal surgeon couldn’t stop the necrosis…”
Dr. Oay turned the monitor until the glowing green histocompatibility matrix filled Thad’s bulging eyes:
“…is because your mother’s biological profile is not compatible with standard European lineages.”
“Adelaide Vance-Bromel is a collateral descendant of the Sterling estate.”
“Her blood requires a direct biological lineal match from the original **1944 Mercer Admiralty Charter**.”
“A match that exists in only one living human being in the state of Georgia.”
Dr. Oay stepped back, pointing her finger toward me as I walked through the executive office doorway:
“Your wife.”
“The woman you just handed an executed divorce decree.”
“The woman whose locks you ordered changed by noon.”
Thad’s face went from pale to an apocalyptic, curdled shade of un-cured limestone.
His pupils dilated until the gray of his irises vanished completely into black.
His mouth worked in dry, spastic, un-coordinated clicks:
*k-k-k.*
“No…” Thad wheezed, his fingers clawing at the mahogany desk edge until his nails cracked:
“No… that’s impossible! Coraly is an Ashworth! Her father was an itinerant carpenter from Tennessee! My mother’s genealogists checked her records four times before I married her!”
“Your mother’s genealogists were fed thirty-four years of manufactured naval counter-intelligence, Thad,” I spoke softly.
I walked to the desk.
I reached into my Scottish tweed hacking jacket.
I pulled out a small, circular, hand-machined piece of tarnished naval ordnance brass:
The master **1944 United States Navy Admiralty Foundation Die**—the physical die used by my grandfather, Chief Master Surveyor Arthur Mercer Senior, to stamp the red wax on the original wartime sovereign deeds eighty years ago:
*CLINK.*
I laid the heavy brass die flat atop his shattered bourbon glass:
“My legal name is **Coraly Eleanor Mercer-Ashworth**.”
“Sole surviving biological granddaughter of Arthur Mercer Senior.”
“The man who surveyed every cubic foot of bedrock beneath this mortuary eighty years ago.”
I bared my teeth in a cold, razor-thin line of polar diamond:
“You thought your family was using me to save your mother and steal a defense redoubt, Thad.”
“You thought you were a master predator executing a brilliant financial harvest.”
“You spent eight years pretending you were a generous husband…”
I reached down, picked up the signed divorce decree from his blotter, and held it suspended six inches above his bleeding face:
“…only to hand me the legal instrument that strips your family of this mortuary, this land, and your mother’s life.”
