Chapter 11 - The Zero Balance—The Knock on the Penthouse Door
I sat in the corner booth of the quiet Montreal diner, staring at the screen of my laptop.
Eighty-five million dollars. Clean, untraceable, sitting in a decentralized offshore account that only my biometric thumbprint could access. For the first time in my life, I took a deep breath that didn’t feel heavy with debt or fear.
I closed the laptop and walked back to my luxury penthouse overlooking the St. Lawrence River. I poured a glass of wine, sat on the velvet sofa, and decided to check the routing nodes one last time to ensure Arthur’s technicians hadn't traced the transfer.
I opened my laptop. I scanned my thumb.
The screen loaded.
Account Balance: $0.00.
My heart slammed against my ribs. I refreshed the page. I ran a diagnostic on the encrypted cypher. Nothing was broken. The cypher was intact. But the money was entirely gone.
Beneath the zero balance, a single line of text appeared in a black terminal box:
“Did you really think a local Chicago kingpin like your father owned that money, Emily?”
I leaped off the sofa, my hands shaking. I grabbed my burner phone to call the offshore broker, but before I could dial, the heavy oak door of my penthouse shuddered.
Someone was knocking.
Slow, deliberate, rhythmic knocks.
I crept toward the door, pulling the chef’s knife from the kitchen block. I looked through the digital peephole camera.
Standing in the hallway was Julian Rossi.
His face was still bandaged from the explosion in Detroit. He wasn't holding a gun. He was holding up my younger sister’s blood-stained jacket.
“Open the door, Emily,” Julian’s voice drifted through the thick wood. “The Consortium just emptied your bank account. In three minutes, they’re going to empty this floor with nerve gas. We need to leave, right now.”
The next chapters are on the left side of your screen.
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