Chapter 6 - The Unraveling of Sophia Reynolds
By Thursday afternoon, the scalpel had done its work, and the infection was ready to be lanced.
I sat in the mahogany-paneled conference room of Kirkland & Ellis on the fiftieth floor of the Willis Tower. Beside me, Julian was reviewing a series of bank statements and encrypted surveillance transcripts provided by *Blackwood Intelligence*—a private security firm that had been monitoring the Moretti family’s communications for the past seventy-two hours.
"You're not going to believe this, Claire," Julian said, tossing a thick dossier across the glass table.
I picked it up. "What did she do?"
"Little Miss Innocent Sophia Reynolds isn't just a home-wrecking parasite," Julian said, his voice laced with cold fury. "She’s a corporate spy. And an unregistered informant for the Castiglione family."
I paused, my eyes scanning the financial logs.
The Castiglione family ran the illicit ports in Gary, Indiana, and had been fighting the Morettis for control of the southern rail yards for over a decade. They were ruthless, brutal, and completely devoid of old-school honor.
According to the documents in my hands, Sophia Reynolds had received over eight hundred thousand dollars in wire transfers from an offshore account in the Cayman Islands over the last eighteen months. The originating entity was a shell company controlled by Dominic Castiglione.
"What was she giving them?" I asked, my fingers tightening on the edge of the vellum pages.
"Shipping schedules. Port manifests. Security codes for the Moretti warehouses in Cicero," Julian said, leaning back in his leather chair. "Sophia’s father left behind three million dollars in unpaid gambling debts to the Castigliones when he died fifteen years ago. Dominic Castiglione came calling on Sophia two years ago, threatening to butcher her mother if she didn't pay up."
"So she used Vincent," I murmured, piecing the puzzle together.
"Worse," Julian said, pointing to a transcript dated the night of the Grand Meridian incident. "The entire hotel setup wasn't an accident, Claire. Sophia intentionally called Vincent to that bar. She intentionally slipped a mild sedative into her own drink to pretend she was incapacitated. And while Vincent was in the bathroom of Suite 1402, she took his phone and forwarded the logistics manifests for the Terminal 4 pharmaceutical shipment to the Castigliones."
I stared at the transcript.
*“The shipment moves Friday night,”* Sophia had texted an encrypted burner number at 02:15 a.m.—while Vincent was sitting on the couch in the other room, believing he was acting as her heroic guardian. *“Tell Dominic I delivered the date. Now wipe my father’s debt.”*
"She was setting up an ambush," I whispered. "The Castigliones were going to hijack that forty-million-dollar shipment on the Michigan border. And because Vincent was the only person with the logistics clearance, the Moretti Commission would have blamed Vincent for the leak. They would have executed him for treason."
Julian smirked, taking a slow sip of his espresso. "The little vixen played him like a cheap fiddle. She knew you were getting suspicious of their relationship, so she orchestrated the hotel stay to accomplish two things at once: give herself an alibi while she stole the data, and drive a final wedge between you and Vincent so you would walk away and leave him completely vulnerable."
"She didn't anticipate one thing," I said, a slow, cold smile spreading across my lips.
"What's that?"
"She didn't anticipate that I wouldn't leave quietly," I said, closing the dossier. "She thought I would pack my bags, cry into my pillow, and disappear to Paris like a good little socialite. She didn't realize that by triggering my departure, she brought the entire Bennett empire down on their heads."
"So, what do we do with this?" Julian asked, tapping the files. "We give this to the federal prosecutor, and Sophia goes to federal prison for twenty years. Vincent probably goes down as an unindicted co-conspirator."
"No," I said, standing up and smoothing my black wool trousers. "Federal prison is too kind. And Vincent needs to see the exact nature of the viper he traded his kingdom for."
"Claire..." Julian warned, though his eyes gleamed with wicked approval. "What are you planning?"
"Marco Moretti has requested an emergency sit-down tomorrow morning at the Palmer House," I said. "He thinks he’s coming to negotiate the release of the Terminal 4 containers. He thinks he can bully me into signing a non-disclosure agreement."
"And?"
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"And we're going to give them their sit-down," I said, picking up the dossier. "Invite Vincent. Invite his mother. And make sure Sophia Reynolds has a front-row seat."
***
