"There was an empty casket," Arthur corrected coldly. "Because the police found nothing in the wreckage but ash and melted steel. Your mother assured everyone he was trapped inside. But the DNA test ran twice yesterday morning. It is a ninety-nine-point-nine percent match to the Vanguard founder’s profile. It is him, Charles."
"You can't prove it!" Charles yelled, the billionaire facade entirely gone. He looked like a cornered animal. "A blood test doesn't prove anything! He doesn't even know his own name! He’s a nobody!"
William whimpered, clutching his ribs, shrinking away from his brother's shouting.
Arthur’s eyes drifted downward, landing on the heavy gold chain dangling awkwardly from Charles’s left coat pocket.
"You have two watches in your pocket, Charles," Arthur noted quietly.
Charles stiffened, stepping back.
"Only two were ever made," Arthur continued, his voice echoing in the tight space. "One for you. One for him. Your father explicitly stated in his will that the holder of the elder watch, provided they bear the bloodline, commands the seventy percent voting share of Vanguard Equities. May I see the watches?"
"No," Charles snarled, gripping his coat. "They're both mine. The vagrant stole one."
"He didn't steal it," one of the security team members spoke up, stepping forward with an iPad. "Hotel security cameras confirm the vagrant dropped a torn canvas bag at 8:14 PM after you assaulted him. The watch fell out of his bag. You confiscated it."
Charles’s breath hitched. They had the footage. They had the DNA.
He was out of moves.
Arthur reached into his suit jacket and pulled out a thick, sealed legal document envelope bearing the official stamp of a federal judge.
"At 7:00 PM tonight, upon receiving the finalized secondary DNA verification, the Vanguard board convened an emergency session," Arthur said, his voice carrying the weight of a judge passing sentence. "You are hereby removed from your position as CEO, effective immediately. Your access to all Vanguard accounts, properties, and corporate assets has been frozen."
"You can't do that!" Charles screamed, lunging forward.
Two of the suited security men instantly stepped in front of Arthur, their hands casually resting on their lapels, physically blocking Charles with a wall of muscle. Charles crashed into them and bounced off, stumbling backward into a puddle, muddying his four-thousand-dollar trousers.
"The funds you used to purchase the bespoke suit you are currently ruining belong to William," Arthur stated coldly, looking down at Charles in the mud. "Your penthouse belongs to William. The car you arrived in belongs to William. You own nothing, Charles. Because you only inherited it under the legal presumption that your brother was deceased."
Charles stayed on his knees in the puddle, the freezing rain soaking through his clothes. He looked up at the towering figures of the lawyers and security team, his chest heaving with panicked breaths.
"I'll fight it," Charles gasped, a desperate, hysterical edge to his voice. "I'll drag this through court for a decade! You think a judge is going to hand a forty-billion-dollar empire to a brain-damaged beggar? I'll destroy the company first!"
"You won't be doing any fighting, Charles," Arthur said, his voice dropping an octave, becoming dangerously quiet. "Because an hour ago, I handed the District Attorney an investigative dossier regarding a bank transfer your mother made twenty years ago. A transfer to two known felons, three days before William’s brake lines were cut."