Chapter 16 - The Return of the Predator
The digital audio feedback hissed through the subterranean study speakers like a cornered viper. My heart slammed against my ribs so hard I thought it would crack my sternum. Richard Vance. The man who had frozen my credit cards, evicted me from my apartment while I was five months pregnant, and waved hundred-dollar bills in my face in front of a horrified supermarket crowd—the man who was supposed to be serving a twenty-year federal sentence in a maximum-security penitentiary in upstate New York.
"How is that possible?" I gasped, gripping the edge of the mahogany desk so tightly my knuckles turned pure white. "He was convicted on federal wire fraud and securities manipulation. He was locked away!"
Vincent didn't waste a single second on shock. His eyes turned completely glacial, burning with a cold, lethal fury that I had only ever seen directed at the most dangerous enemies of his empire. His fingers flew across the terminal keyboard, tracing the audio signal back to its source.
"It's a routed VoIP relay," Vincent growled, his voice dropping into a terrifyingly calm register. "He's not calling from the prison. He's bouncing the signal through three different satellite transponders in Europe to mask his GPS coordinates."
*“Don't bother trying to trace the signal, Vincent,”* Richard’s voice purred through the intercom, dripping with sadistic amusement. *“You might be a self-made billionaire now, but you’re playing a game way above your pay grade. Your father knew it. That’s why he came back—to salvage what’s left of the sinking ship before the syndicate blows it completely out of the water.”*
Vincent slammed his palm down on the intercom kill-switch, cutting off Richard’s voice in mid-sentence. The silence in the study was deafening.
"Arthur was right," Vincent muttered, staring blankly at the glowing monitor. "The Swiss syndicate didn't just back Richard during our initial legal battles—they broke him out of federal custody the moment his appeals hit a wall. They’re using him as a blunt instrument to break our psychological defenses."
"They want us paranoid, divided, and desperate," I said, forcing my breathing to steady as I walked around the desk to stand beside my husband. I placed my hand firmly over his clenched fist. "Richard wants me terrified. He wants me looking over my shoulder every second of the day, wondering if he's going to step out of the shadows. But he's forgetting one thing."
Vincent looked up, his grey eyes locking onto mine. "What's that?"
"When he humiliated me in that supermarket, I had seventeen dollars, no job, no home, and a baby growing inside me," I said, my voice ringing with cold, absolute resolve. "I survived the absolute worst he could possibly throw at me. Now, I have an empire, a brilliant husband who would burn the world down to protect us, and the legal right to bury him right back under a prison floor. We don't run. We trap *them*."
A slow, fierce smile broke through the hardened lines of Vincent’s face. He stood up from his chair, pulling me into his arms and pressing a deep, fierce kiss to my forehead.
"You are the most dangerous woman I have ever met, Mrs. Rossi," he murmured, his voice thick with pride. "And I love you more than life itself."
"Save the romance for after we dismantle the syndicate," I replied, stepping back and pointing toward the monitor. "If Marcus is the mole, he’s going to try to execute the final asset transfer to the Swiss accounts tonight. We use his terminal to set a trap. We feed them false financial data, trick them into thinking the entire Rossi portfolio is up for grabs, and let them walk right into a federal trap."
Vincent’s eyes lit up with tactical genius. "Brilliant. We use Marcus’s own access credentials to broadcast a bait file. Once they initiate the download from their Swiss servers, federal cyber-crime units can reverse-engineer the packet and pinpoint their exact physical server location—whether it's in Geneva, Zurich, or somewhere offshore."
Just as we began mapping out the counter-attack, a sharp, frantic knocking echoed on the heavy oak door of the subterranean study.
Vincent and I exchanged a sharp glance. Vincent drew his concealed sidearm with fluid, silent efficiency, stepping to the side of the door as I stood near the terminal.
"Open fire if they cross the threshold," Vincent whispered.
May you like
He swung the heavy door open, ready to strike—and stopped dead in his tracks.
Standing in the hallway wasn't an assassin, and it wasn't Arthur. It was Marcus Vance, looking pale, terrified, and bleeding profusely from a deep gash across his forehead.
