The heavy bronze doors of the Grand Rotunda closed behind the Chamberlain, but the commotion on the diamond plaza did not stop.
Viscount Bork sat slumped on the red carpet, staring at the foreclosure deed on his communicator. His fat fingers trembled violently against the glass screen as he frantically dialed his chief accountant at the Iron-Ridge Banking Syndicate.
“Answer me, you idiot!” Bork screamed into his earpiece, his voice cracking with hysteria. “Tell me this foreclosure notice is a mistake! My family has held Moon Seven for two hundred years!”
His accountant’s cold, terrified voice crackled back through the speaker: “It’s real, Your Lordship! The Taichu Group bought our entire debt portfolio at noon! They called in the principal on your defaulted mining bonds! The bailiffs have already locked the blast doors on Moon Seven! You have zero collateral left!”
Bork dropped the communicator onto the red carpet, clutching his chest as cold sweat soaked his velvet collar.
Liu Yan stood beside him, clutching her peacock feathers. Her face was twisted with furious, venomous denial.
“Lord Bork! Don’t listen to those lying bankers!” Liu Yan hissed, pulling on Bork’s velvet sleeve with manic energy. “Lin Mo is a fraud! I dated him for three years! He used to deliver noodles in the freezing rain just to pay my apartment rent! He could barely scrape together forty yuan for a movie ticket on my birthday! How could he possibly be richer than a Star-Viscount?! It’s all an illusion!”
