Chapter 7 - The Empire Collapses
By Monday morning, the collapse of Garrett Lawson and Lawson Global Enterprise was total and absolute.
At 7:00 a.m., the Board of Directors convened an emergency session. In a unanimous 11-0 vote, Garrett Lawson was formally terminated as Chief Executive Officer for cause, stripping him of his severance package, his stock options, and his corporate indemnity protection. Eleanor Lawson was forced to resign as Chairman under threat of immediate board censure.
At 10:00 a.m., federal agents from the FBI and the IRS Criminal Investigation Division executed search warrants at Lawson Global headquarters and the Lawson family estate in Winnetka.
Boxes of financial records, hard drives, and private servers were seized. The United States Attorney announced a formal press conference confirming that Garrett Lawson and Eleanor Lawson had been named co-defendants in a thirty-two-count federal indictment involving offshore tax evasion, corporate embezzlement, and securities fraud.
Chloe Vance, seeking to avoid prison time, signed a full cooperation agreement with the Department of Justice, providing detailed testimony regarding Garrett’s unauthorized use of corporate funds and insider trading activities.
By afternoon, Garrett’s personal assets were frozen by federal court order. His multi-million-dollar estate was placed under federal receivership. The banks called in his private loans, his credit lines were canceled, and his legal team at Kirkland & Ellis withdrew as his counsel after his retainer checks bounced.
On Tuesday evening, eight days after the death of his son, Garrett Lawson walked through the heavy steel doors of the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Chicago.
He wore no tailored suit. He wore a bright orange jumpsuit, rubber sandals, and plastic handcuffs. His billion-dollar empire, his luxury suites, his sports cars, and his arrogant belief in his own invincibility had vanished entirely, replaced by a six-by-eight-foot concrete cell.
That night, as the heavy steel door slammed shut behind him with a deafening, metallic CLANG, Garrett sat down on the narrow metal cot.
The cell was dead silent.
He reached into his pocket out of instinct, looking for his phone, but his hands found only coarse orange fabric.
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In the dark, total quiet of the prison block, the silence began to ring in his ears. It sounded like seventeen unanswered phone calls echoing across an empty room.
And for the first time in his life, Garrett Lawson covered his face with his hands and wept for a son who would never come back.
