CHAPTER 13: THE LAST BETRAYAL
Investigator Torres forced Roman to his knees.
Malcolm approached slowly.
“I told Adrian that loyalty was simply fear with better manners,” he said. “Torres has always understood that.”
Torres avoided Evelyn’s eyes.
Malcolm held out his hand.
“The case.”
Evelyn tightened her grip.
“How did you escape?”
“A transportation officer owed me a favor.”
Naomi moved toward him.
“You’re finished. The recordings are already with federal prosecutors.”
“Recordings can be challenged. Witnesses can change their stories.”
Malcolm looked at Torres.
“People always change their stories when someone they love is threatened.”
Evelyn glanced at Roman.
He remained unnaturally calm.
Then she noticed his right hand resting against the ground.
Two fingers tapped the soil.
Three short taps.
Pause.
Three more.
A signal from their childhood.
Get ready.
Evelyn slowly extended the case toward Malcolm.
He reached for it.
Roman swept Torres’s legs from beneath her. Her gun fired into the air.
Naomi struck Malcolm with the metal case while Evelyn grabbed the fallen weapon and kicked it away.
Federal agents emerged from behind the cemetery wall.
Roman had activated a silent tracker before entering.
Torres and Malcolm were arrested.
This time, there would be no private transportation.
No purchased officers.
No escape.
Rebecca, however, remained missing.
That afternoon, Evelyn used the secret trust to call an emergency shareholder meeting.
She removed Malcolm from the board, suspended every director named in the ledger, and restored control of Hart International to an independent oversight committee.
The city celebrated Malcolm’s fall.
But Evelyn knew the war was not finished.
Rebecca still controlled several offshore accounts containing hundreds of millions of stolen dollars.
More importantly, she had taken Cecilia.
During the cemetery confrontation, Rebecca had entered the protected medical facility using Torres’s credentials.
A video arrived during the shareholder meeting.
Rebecca stood beside Cecilia on the roof of Hart Tower.
Wind whipped through their clothes.
“You took my father,” Rebecca said. “So I’m taking your mother.”
A second figure appeared behind them.
Adrian.
His injured shoulder was bandaged, and a chain connected his wrist to the rooftop railing.
Rebecca smiled into the camera.
“Bring the ledger page and the trust documents.”
Evelyn’s face remained calm.
“Where?”
“You already know.”
The video ended.
Roman immediately called federal agents.
Evelyn gathered the documents.
“You’re not going alone,” he said.
“She’ll kill Mom if she sees police.”
“She’ll kill you if she doesn’t.”
Evelyn looked toward Hart Tower through the boardroom windows.
“No. Rebecca wants to prove she is stronger than Malcolm.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I spent years married to someone exactly like her.”
May you like
Evelyn placed the documents inside a leather folder.
“And people like that always need an audience.”
