Chapter 7 - The Trap in Malibu
"You're alive," I said, my voice dangerously level, every muscle in my body coiled like a steel spring.
Andrew let out a sharp, barking laugh and walked toward the wet bar, completely unbothered by my presence. He poured two fingers of Macallan 25 into a crystal tumbler.
"Alive and thriving, Danny boy," he smirked, taking a slow sip. "Honestly, I'm impressed. I gave you credit for being a brilliant corporate workhorse, but I never thought you’d figure out the breadcrumbs. Did Maria squeal? I told Vanessa that old woman was a liability three months ago. Vanessa was always too soft on the domestic help."
"She wasn't too soft last night," I replied, taking three slow steps toward him. "She fractured Maria’s skull and dragged her across a broken mirror."
Andrew rolled his eyes, taking another sip of scotch. "Messy. Amateurish. But then again, Vanessa always gets emotional when large sums of money are on the line. Still, you have to admit, Danny... she played you like a cheap violin for fourteen months. Did you really think an Upper East Side goddess like Vanessa Sterling would genuinely fall in love with a boring, spreadsheet-obsessed monk like you?"
The words were meant to cut, to emasculate, to provoke me into an uncontrollable rage. But the pain had already passed. All that remained was absolute, crystalline clarity.
"You faked your death because of the audit," I stated coldly. "The federal grand jury was issuing subpoenas for your offshore shell companies six years ago. You knew Dad would disinherit you, and you knew you were facing twenty years in federal prison."
"Bingo!" Andrew clapped his hands mockingly. "Give the CEO a gold star! Why rot in a federal penitentiary when I could stage a tragic maritime accident, let my dutiful, bleeding-heart older brother take the reins, and wait for the estate to swell to ten times its value? All I needed was an inside operator. Someone to get close to you. Someone to help me harvest the crop when it was ripe."
"Vanessa was yours from the start."
"Since college," Andrew grinned, leaning against the bar. "She was my greatest investment. We engineered your entire 'accidental' meeting at the Metropolitan Museum gala. We studied your grief, Daniel. We knew exactly which buttons to press. The lonely, grieving billionaire looking for redemption... God, you were so pathetic it made her sick to kiss you."
Every word was a nail in the coffin of the life I had built.
"And Noah?" I asked, my voice dropping to a whisper.
The smirk vanished from Andrew’s face. For the first time, a dark, venomous scowl shadowed his features.
"That bastard is a mistake," Andrew spat, setting his glass down with force. "A worthless brat born from a club tramp who didn't know her place. But my idiot father had that ridiculous bloodline clause written into the family trust—stipulating that any direct biological male heir of the Whitmore line holds an irrevocable veto over the sale of core corporate assets upon reaching age eight."
"Maria kept him hidden from you," I said. "Because she knew you’d kill him."
"I don't need to kill him," Andrew sneered. "I just need him under my legal guardianship. Once he's under my control, that veto power is mine. And Vanessa’s team was supposed to secure him last night."
"Your hitman failed, Andrew," I said, stepping directly into his personal space. "Noah is safe. Maria is alive under twenty-four-hour armed guard. And Marcus Vance has locked every single dollar in your Cook Islands account."
Andrew didn't panic. Instead, a slow, sickening smile spread across his lips once more.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. He tapped the screen and held it up to my face.
It was a live video feed from a high-definition security camera.
The camera was looking down into the reinforced basement bunker of Marcus Vance’s Hollywood Hills safe house.
Marcus was lying on the concrete floor, bound in heavy zip-ties, bleeding from a deep head wound. Standing over him, holding a silenced submachine gun, was Vanessa.
And sitting on a metal chair in the corner of the room, shivering in terror with a gun pointed at his temple by a second operative, was Noah.
"Did you really think you were the only one who had Marcus Vance on retainer, Daniel?" Andrew whispered into my ear, his breath smelling of expensive scotch. "Marcus’s second-in-command has been on my payroll for three years. The moment you took the boy to that safe house, you handed him directly to us."
My heart stopped. The world went dead silent.
"Here’s the deal, big brother," Andrew whispered, tapping my cheek with the cold glass of his tumbler. "You're going to get in your car. You're going to drive up to our family’s old coastal estate on Point Dume—the place where I supposedly died. Vanessa is waiting there with our little nephew. You will sign the irrevocable master power of attorney, handing full operational control of Whitmore Global over to Alexander Wright."
Andrew leaned in closer, his eyes burning with pure sociopathic malice.
May you like
"If you bring the police, the boy gets thrown off the Point Dume cliffs. If you hesitate, Vanessa puts a bullet through his seven-year-old brain. You have forty-five minutes, Daniel. Don't be late for family dinner."
***
