The Cumerian Unraveling Trilogy (Scars of Ambition, Vendetta Clause, Cycles of Power)

by Jason Letts

  Picking up her keys and opening her door, Sierra stepped inside and exchanged her shoes for the ones with the pointiest heels. She carried a pair with flat soles she would need for the dragging, but first she reentered the hall by the stairwell, which was lit with an eerie glow from the electric lights overhead.

  Slowly descending the steps, she reached Raiden, whose neck wound bled profusely. It didn’t feel like self-defense anymore, because he couldn’t have been any less threatening. He was completely incapacitated and barely alive, but in all her dealings with him, she’d learned there was really only one solution for stopping the torment.

  “You asked for this,” she said, knowing her first act as Chief Executive would draw the wrath of one of Cumeria’s most powerful premier families, but letting him get away with it would be worse—not just for the company or the nation, but for herself.

  The side of his head was flat against a stair, some combination of blood and drool oozing from his mouth. Sierra held the railing, raised her leg, and stomped the tip of her heel as hard as she could into the flat of his skull. It broke through, penetrating almost to the heel’s base.

  Trading shoes and leaving the bloody shoe on the step, Sierra managed to drag Raiden to the ground floor and out a door that led to the back without anyone seeing. She removed his silver jacket and pants, which was easy because they were already undone, along with his wallet and anything else that could identify him. She’d find some spot to throw them away during the train ride back to the ClawLands.

  Another dead body in the back alleys of Ristle wouldn’t draw much attention, but she had to take advantage of the time and make the trip home as soon as possible.

  After hours of furious packing and not a wink of sleep, Sierra made it onto the first train at the beginning of the next cycle. Most of her belongings had been thrown out, making her feel like she’d completely shed her former life in the city. Along with a couple of bags, she had Nemi tucked in a roomy pocket. He would make her region’s name, the ClawLands, fitting in an entirely new way.

  Bleary-eyed and edgy, she made it to the towers around the middle of the cycle and decided that the best thing to do was get to work right away. The last thing she expected was a grand ceremony to welcome her, especially considering the tumultuous circumstances, but she found that virtually no one knew about the retirement and appointment. The security guard barely let her into the building at all.

  The bags were threatening to tear her arms off when she made it to her father’s office. Beside the door, Skuire sat at his assistant’s desk, reading a report. When she trudged his way, he looked up in surprise.

  “Hey there, can you get the door for me? I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but Dad left his position to me,” Sierra said.

  Skuire couldn’t have jumped from his seat faster if his clothes were on fire. He probably wasn’t even in his mid-twenties yet, and his enthusiasm was adorable.

  “Here you go,” he said. “And Mr. Bracken did tell me what was happening before he left.”

  Sierra pondered that this man may have been the only one her father told. She dropped the bags on the couch.

  “My father trusted you, Skuire. You were someone he spoke fondly of. Can I trust that you’ll be as loyal and hardworking for me as you were for him?” she asked.

  “Absolutely,” he affirmed. “It would be an honor.”

  “Honor is better seen than heard, but there’ll be plenty of opportunities for you to prove it soon. Can you help take care of a few things for me? I need you to draft a company memo explaining that I’m now the chief executive and send it to everyone. Also, please find me an apartment as soon as you can or else I’ll be sleeping here. And while you’re doing that, let the department heads know I’ll be coming around to their offices to formally introduce myself.”

  Skuire nodded dutifully, then a twitch in Sierra’s jacket pocket got his attention.

  “Is there something alive in your pocket?” He looked astonished, and Sierra chuckled.

  “Yes, but if I tell you about it now, it’ll derail your whole day. I need you to get all of those things I just listed done. When things quiet down, I’ll find a chance to show it to you. Oh, and that reminds me. Strip out all of the carpet and tile on the floor in my office.”

  “But then it’ll just be bare concrete, right?” Skuire was puzzled.

  “Exactly.”

  The young man smiled and returned to his desk, giving Sierra a chance to collect her thoughts and calm her fragmented mind before trying to fill her father’s shoes. She’d spent most of her life imagining what it would be like to say, “Hi, I’m Sierra Bracken, C.E.O. of Bracken Energy,” but now that it was here, it still didn’t feel real.

  “You’ll help me, won’t you?” she said to Nemi, reaching into her pocket and holding him.

  Getting to work, Sierra had always thought that being a good number cruncher and decision maker would make her the perfect fit for the job, but as she went around to the various departments and heard about the unmitigated disasters that the company faced, she realized they needed a kind of leadership that she was completely unprepared to give.

  “We’re being crippled in the western markets,” the operations head explained. “Saboteurs from Bolt & Keize are destroying power lines and transformer stations all over, and worst of all they’re moving east. If they get to some of our pipelines, half the country will be unreachable.”

  “But can’t we just have the Cumerian Guard take care of it?” she asked, at a complete loss for how to deal with such flagrant hostility. The way the operations head rolled his eyes made Sierra sure she’d never suggest using the Cumerian Guard again. Now that she thought about it, she’d never heard of them getting involved in private affairs, just government business. “Then let’s take them to court over this. They’re breaking the law.”

  The older man had worked with her father forever, and the way he looked at her made her wonder if she’d ever be anything other than a little girl to him.

  “You can start a war of lawyers over this if you want,” he sighed, “but that won’t do anything to stop them from what they’re doing, at least not for years.”

  Sierra fully understood that he was unsatisfied with her responses. She promised to find a better solution and told him to do the best he could in the meantime. Her next stop was the billing department, where she discovered her problems were not confined to the west.

  “There’s a marked increase in delinquent accounts lately, particularly in the FarmFields, but developing rapidly in the OrePlains,” the director explained over a map.

  “Is there an issue with delivery here, too?” she asked, setting her jaw and crossing her arms. The billing director, a scrawny guy in a short-sleeved dress shirt and bow tie, shook his head.

  “When a customer stops paying in these regions, they are ten times less likely to settle their accounts than people in other areas. As best we can tell, they are very willing to milk us for whatever gas we’ll give them while we send warning notices until we finally shut them off. The serious part is that this accounts for over a third of our base. If this becomes a common practice, our flow of working capital will get squeezed down to a trickle.”

  Sierra glared at the regions on the map, each controlled by one of the premiere families, the Wozniaks of the OrePlains, the Brackens of the ClawLands, and the Illiams of the FarmFields. A breakdown in the basic exchange of raw metals, gas power, and food would scuttle the entire Cumerian economy and send millions of people scrambling to produce whatever commodities they hadn’t needed to make in generations.

  “As bad as it is to lose customers, letting people think they can steal from us is worse. Send the warning notice just three cycles after the first missed payment, and if they don’t settle up by the end of the next cycle, cut them off,” she ordered.

  “You got it,” he said.

  By the time she made it back to her desk after making the rounds it was near the end of the work cycle. Sierra had not
iced that the memo had gone out to everyone, and she hoped tomorrow would give her a chance to dig out from under this mess. She had the directions to her new apartment and started for the door when Carlisle Empry, cane at his side, strolled in.

  “I think you managed to see every single member of the upper management today except me. Should I feel slighted?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “I’m sorry. I ran out of time,” she lied. Sierra hadn’t yet thought through her strategy for dealing with Carlisle or the fallout from her father’s investigation and wasn’t about to initiate a meeting with him until she’d done so.

  “No, you’re running out of time,” he corrected her, the bemused look on his face dropping into a sinister scowl. “I’ll admit that I didn’t expect your father would voluntarily leave his own company, much less manage to allow you to keep his seat warm for me. But make no mistake, you’ll be thrown out just as abruptly as he was.”

  A flush of anger swept through Sierra at his brazen threats.

  “You don’t know what you’re doing,” she scolded him. “The company is in danger of falling apart on all sides, and without a Bracken in charge, even the people of the ClawLands won’t have much loyalty to it.”

  Carlisle grimaced and appeared on the verge of regurgitating something.

  “The people of the ClawLands despise you. They know these problems are the fault of your family, and they know removing you will alleviate them. You’re just like him—your father. You try to deny your past, but it fills your mouth with ash and your heart with stone. We can’t be rid of you quick enough.” He seethed, gripping the handle of his cane.

  Sierra had never felt so angry in her entire life. She understood why her father had attacked him, understood fully because she had a strong urge to do the same.

  “It’s too bad for you that I’m going to be here for a while, so you’ll just have to get used to dealing with me…‌until the next round of board elections come along.”

  Carlisle chuckled and wiped his mustache.

  “You think you’ll make it that long? I’ve scheduled a meeting with the board in eight cycles, and the first order of business will be holding a ‘no confidence’ vote on your appointment. I’ve taken naps longer than you were senior partner at Fiori Law, and no one around here thinks that your experience qualifies you to lead.”

  Sierra stifled a gasp. Ralph had been more right than she could’ve guessed. She’d barely had time to sit at her desk before Carlisle had a plan in place to eject her from the building, ruining everything they’d done to keep the company in Bracken hands. Usually an executive had to do something wrong before being subjected to a ‘no confidence’ vote, but as long as the board went along with it, Carlisle would be able to bend the rules.

  Carlisle must’ve sensed her dismay, because a smile cracked across his pale lips.

  He reached into his pocket and produced a thin envelope. It barely registered that she’d seen one like it before.

  “Oh, and this came for you,” Carlisle added, handing over the envelope and turning to leave. He whistled on his way out.

  Gritting her teeth at the ruthless chairman, Sierra turned her attention to the envelope. Trepidation sprung up from someplace she couldn’t say, saturating her senses. She ran her thumb under the seal and unfolded a plain white card. On the inside were letters written in a decorative script, but the meaning was eviscerating.

  “We are coming for you. Your blood and that of your people will clog the Claws for what you’ve done.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Raising the sword overhead, Lowell blocked a high slice in the nick of time. A grin crept onto his face. He parried another swing, spun in place, and launched an attack from the other side. His blade met the edge of a dull practice sword, the two weapons jostling as their masters stared each other down.

  “Once a strike is deflected, focus on the next move. Follow through, but don’t linger after the chance is gone. And don’t swing with your wrists alone. Your arms, shoulders, back, feet, the momentum of your body—they all need to work in concert to deliver a powerful blow. That’s what puts your opponent on the defensive, not merely the sharp edge in front of you,” Lowell’s new teacher, Glickon, said.

  Lowell nodded, but understanding the words and getting his body to execute them were two different things. Now that he was retired, he had all the time he could dream of to get it right, and that’s why he had dug up this young martial arts instructor who’d spent some time on the southern continents in an area he called “The Land of Swords.”

  The pair’s mock skirmish continued, lunges and slices performed over and over again to develop a rhythm. The exercise took place in the yard behind Lowell’s home, not far from the patio and the lawn furniture and underneath some floodlights. He hadn’t spent this much time out here since he’d used to kick a ball with Taylor over a decade ago, but he relished every bit of sword practice and fitness training. It was like this life had been waiting for him since the beginning.

  Lowell drew the block with an obvious high-to-low chop, but followed it in to slam Glickon with his shoulder, knocking him back and slicing around the middle. Glickon knelt and maneuvered his sword behind his shoulder to halt the attack, waiting until Lowell recoiled for another swing before quickly smacking his knee and rolling away.

  “Ouch, you said not to linger!” Lowell said.

  “That doesn’t mean you should wind up like a top. You might’ve realized you’d left yourself open if you were really here with me,” he said, running a hand through his scruffy hair.

  “What do you mean?” Lowell asked, rubbing his knee.

  “You’re distracted. You’ve been putting the time in these past couple cycles, but your work is still a major distraction. I think you’d catch on much faster if you practiced the single-mindedness of a life or death fight, not just swinging swords around.”

  Lowell set his jaw. It had been a virtue at the office to juggle twenty things at once, and in truth he was having trouble letting that go. Glickon had him pegged. Even when he thought he was entirely focused on what he was doing, there was always a little part of him worrying about his daughter. Some faint lights from the top of the towers shined in the distance. It was possible Sierra was in there now, getting whipped by more of Carlisle’s schemes.

  “You’re right,” Lowell admitted. Training his body but not his mind would be misguided. “Let me make a quick call and then I can get it out of my head.”

  Glickon crossed his arms.

  “If you can’t drop it now, you’ll never be able to drop it,” he said.

  Grimacing at the criticism, Lowell went over to his phone on the lawn chair and set his sword in its new scabbard. He’d been waiting a few cycles to make this call, and he’d never be able to focus until he knew where things stood.

  “Can you connect me to Ralph, please? This is Lowell Bracken,” he said, asking for his teacher’s sympathy with a look. It took a few moments for Ralph to get on. “Hey, so what’s the situation here? Have we nailed Carlisle to the wall yet?”

  “No, we haven’t,” Ralph said, releasing an agonized sigh. Lowell’s stomach sank.

  “Well, what’s the problem? I thought we had a few good target areas to work on after our meeting.”

  Ralph wasn’t one to drag out unpleasant news. Each instant he hesitated made Lowell’s impression of the situation grow more and more catastrophic.

  “Look, there’s no easy way to say this. We’ve had to drop your case because all of our payment requests are bouncing. I hate to be the one to break it to you,” he said.

  “What?” Lowell reeled. “The payments bounced? That would only happen if I had no money. That can’t be. Money’s practically the only thing I have left!”

  “Yeah,” Ralph muttered during the pause. Lowell pondered the last piece of the puzzle on his own. At first Lowell concluded that Randall must’ve cleaned out his account for his chancellorship campaign, but even he couldn’t have gotten to that money wi
thout approval.

  “There’s no way anything could happen to my money as long as it’s safe in my wife’s bank, and she’d never…‌Melody.”

  “I’m so sorry, Lowell. I’ve been going through this very same thing with my wife, but we’d need a dozen guys working overtime to manage your case, and we can’t do that for nothing. I hope you…”

  Lowell could barely hold the phone, much less listen to another word. He glanced at the house, with its spacious interior and custom-made windows. It had been days since he’d seen his wife, a fact Lowell had gladly accepted, but now it was obvious she’d left for good. And every count that wasn’t tied up in Bracken stock was gone.

  No longer able to stand, Lowell descended to the ground and leaned his head against the chair. He made the call that was now unavoidable.

  “Melody, what have you done?” he asked, remarkably calm.

  The harsh, grating voice he’d endured for over fifteen years rattled through the speaker.

  “Can we be honest here? I think we both understood fully what this marriage was about, and I’m not about to get stuck on a sinking ship. We had a good run for a while, but it’s time to part ways,” she said, not an ounce of remorse in her voice.

  “So you took all of my money and locked my account?”

  “Come on. You’re a businessman. You know how it works. When you’re no longer a customer at the bank, you forfeit the contents of your account. It doesn’t matter how large or small that is,” she explained, no doubt pleased with herself.

  “So I was always a customer and you were always a whore. Is that it?”

  “You can call it whatever you want, but that doesn’t change anything,” she said, defensive. Lowell rubbed his cheeks and chin.