Chapter 5 - Blood in the Water
My breath hitched in my chest.
The air inside the elevator turned to solid ice.
"My sister?" I whispered.
The word tasted like ash on my tongue.
"Evelyn?"
Delia stepped into the elevator cab.
Her face was drawn, her eyes bloodshot with exhaustion and fear.
She held the manila folder out with trembling hands.
Declan snatched it from her fingers.
His thumb broke the red wax seal with a sharp snap.
He flipped open the heavy cover.
I leaned against his arm, staring down at the crisp white documents inside.
There it was.
The digital transfer authorization form for the Forty Million Dollar wire.
The electronic signature at the bottom wasn't mine.
It was an authorized secondary proxy.
EVELYN WARD.
My younger sister.
The sister whose college tuition I had paid in full.
The sister whose penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park had been purchased
with a trust fund I had created for her twenty-first birthday.
The sister who, just yesterday, had hugged me in my kitchen and said she was so
proud of my charity work.
Beneath her signature was the secondary approval code.
Issued through a private banking terminal inside the Beacon Grand’s penthouse
suite.
Suite 1402.
My heart hammered against my ribs, each beat sending a pulse of cold fire
through my veins.
"Evelyn is here?" I breathed, looking up at Declan.
"In the hotel?"
Delia nodded quickly, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
"She checked into the presidential suite three hours ago, Mrs. Vance," Delia
said quietly.
"Under a corporate alias."
"She brought in two private courier cases."
"I only saw the manifest because the front desk flagged the security protocol
for high-value deposits."
"When the fraud alert sounded in the ballroom... I ran the access logs."
"The transmission that routed the forty million dollars didn't come from Miles's
phone."
"Miles was just the decoy."
"He was supposed to cause a scene, draw everyone's attention to you, and make
the DA's warrant look like a public scandal."
"While everyone was watching Bianca tear your blouse... your sister was upstairs
draining the reserve vaults."
I felt the blood drain from my face.
It felt like a physical blow to the sternum.
A total betrayal.
Miles and Bianca were predators, but they were strangers.
They were shallow, greedy sharks looking for an easy meal.
But Evelyn?
I had raised Evelyn after our parents died in a car crash twelve years ago.
I had given up my early twenties to make sure she never felt poor, never felt
abandoned, never felt the biting chill of an empty pantry.
And she had sold me out for a wire transfer.
Declan didn't say a word.
His silence was far more terrifying than any scream.
He closed the folder slowly.
His knuckles turned bone-white as his grip tightened around the cardboard.
He reached out and pressed the button for the 14th floor.
The elevator chimed softly.
The doors slid shut.
The digital display began to tick upward.
Floor 4.
Floor 7.
Floor 10.
"Declan," I said, my voice barely above a whisper.
My hands were shaking beneath the cashmere coat.
"Declan, look at me."
He turned his head.
His gray eyes were like molten steel, burning with a cold, terrifying fury that
could level a city.
"She's my sister," I said, the words catching in my throat.
"She tried to put you in a federal penitentiary tonight, Iris," Declan said.
His voice was dead level.
No emotion.
Pure, surgical ice.
"She stood by while that woman stripped you in front of six hundred people."
"She planned this with Corrigan."
"She knew Harrison was coming with handcuffs."
"She wanted you locked away so she could claim power of attorney over the Vance
family trusts."
Floor 12.
Floor 13.
Ding.
The elevator slowed to a smooth halt.
The golden doors parted.
The hallway of the 14th floor was carpeted in plush, sound-absorbing burgundy
wool.
It was dead silent.
At the end of the long corridor stood two private security guards dressed in
tactical suits.
They were stationed outside Suite 1402.
When they saw Declan step out of the elevator, their hands moved instinctively
toward their hip holsters.
"Hold on, sir," the first guard barked, stepping forward.
"This floor is private. You need to—"
Declan didn't even slow down.
Behind us, Marcus and the second Vance security director stepped smoothly out of
the adjacent service elevator.
Before the guard could finish his sentence, Marcus stepped in.
A short, brutal strike to the guard's collarbone.
A swift sweep of the leg.
The guard hit the carpet with a dull thud, his breath exploding from his lungs
in a wheezing gasp.
The second guard froze, his hand trembling inches from his sidearm.
Marcus pressed the barrel of a concealed nine-millimeter pistol directly against
the guard’s forehead.
"Back up," Marcus whispered softly.
The guard raised both hands slowly and took three steps backward, pressing his
spine flat against the wallpaper.
Declan walked right past them.
He didn't look down at the man groaning on the floor.
He reached the heavy double mahogany doors of Suite 1402.
The electronic card reader glowed green.
Declan didn't bother looking for a key.
He raised his heavy, leather-soled shoe and kicked the door right beside the
electronic lock.
BOOM!
The heavy oak frame splintered with a deafening crack.
The double doors swung wildly inward, slamming against the interior walls.
Inside the opulent penthouse, a crystal champagne flute dropped to the floor.
Shatter!
Evelyn was standing beside an open leather suitcase laid flat on a glass coffee
table.
She was wearing a silk robe.
Her blonde hair was pinned up in an elegant chignon.
On the table rested three black electronic hard drives, four international
passports, and thick stacks of banded one-hundred-dollar bills.
Beside her stood a man in an expensive charcoal suit.
He was holding a satellite phone.
It was Victor Vale.
Bianca’s older brother.
The real mastermind behind the Vale family empire.
Evelyn gasped, clutching the front of her robe as she backed away toward the
floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the glowing Manhattan skyline.
"Iris?" Evelyn stammered, her voice trembling.
"Declan?"
Victor Vale didn't flinch.
He calmly lowered the satellite phone and set it on the glass table.
A smirk formed on his lips.
"Well," Victor said smoothly, straightening his cuffs.
"The party ended earlier than expected."
"I assume Miles made a fool of himself downstairs?"
Declan stepped into the room.
The air in the penthouse seemed to plummet twenty degrees.
"Evelyn," I said, stepping past Declan into the light of the chandelier.
My voice was hollow.
Empty.
"Why?"
Evelyn stared at me.
She looked at my torn blouse, hidden beneath Declan's massive coat.
She looked at my pale, exhausted face.
For half a second, a flash of guilt flickered across her eyes.
Then it vanished.
Hardened by years of jealousy that I had never even noticed.
"Why?" Evelyn spat, her voice suddenly turning bitter and venomous.
"Because I was sick of living in your shadow, Iris!"
"Because you act like a saint while sitting on billions of dollars!"
"You spend all your time feeding orphans and building hospitals, while I have to
beg you for an allowance every single quarter!"
"I paid for your life, Evelyn!" I cried out, my voice cracking.
"I gave you everything!"
"You gave me scraps!" Evelyn screamed back.
"You gave me what you thought I deserved!"
"Victor offered me an equal partnership."
"Forty million from your stupid foundation to buy out the South American
shipping rights."
"And with you in federal prison for fraud, I would have been named the sole
beneficiary of the family estate."
"It was perfect."
"It was clean."
Victor Vale chuckled softly, leaning back against the arm of the leather sofa.
"She's right, Declan," Victor said arrogantly.
"You might have crushed Miles downstairs, but you're too late up here."
"The forty million dollars cleared the European clearinghouse five minutes ago."
"It's already in an untraceable blind trust in Zurich."
"You can't touch it."
"And if you touch me, my legal team will release the encrypted transaction logs
proving Iris’s personal IP address initiated the request."
Victor picked up a glass of scotch from the bar cart.
He swirled the amber liquid, looking at Declan with smug, absolute confidence.
"You lose, Vance."
"Your wife goes to prison tomorrow morning, or you let us walk out of this hotel
with the money."
"Those are your only two choices."
Declan stood entirely still.
He looked at Victor.
Then he looked at Evelyn.
A cold, dark smile spread across Declan's lips.
It was a smile that promised absolute, total annihilation.
Declan reached into his pocket and pulled out a small black remote control with
a solitary glowing blue switch.
"You really should have checked who owns the Zurich clearinghouse, Victor,"
Declan said softly.
He pressed the blue switch.
Far below us, in the basement of the hotel, a deafening explosion of sirens
erupted.
The lights in the penthouse blinked out.
Red emergency strobe lights bathed the entire room in blood-colored shadows.
Victor’s satellite phone began to beep frantically with a red flashing alert:
SYSTEM OVERRIDE: ASSETS CONFISCATED BY CENTRAL INTERPOL.
Victor’s face drained of every drop of color.
The glass of scotch slipped from his fingers, shattering across the hardwood
floor.
And in the flashing red light, Declan took one step forward, his voice a lethal
whisper:
"You thought you were stealing forty million dollars from my wife."
May you like
"You just handed me every asset your family has ever owned."
(Story continues in full sequence through Chapter 15...)
