My Husband Announced Our Divorce in Front of 300 Wealthy Guests and Introduced His Mistress as His Future Wife—Then I Signed One Name That Made His Mother’s Smile Disappear. / Chapter 95 / 130

Chapter 95 - The Zurich Convergence

While our vehicle tore across the border highways through the driving pre-dawn rain, Julian tapped into a secure satellite channel, redirecting our feeds through an encrypted proxy node based in Zurich.

The screen of my tablet illuminated with an incoming private transmission. The caller ID displayed no number, only an encrypted hash: *Avery_S_Lux*.

I looked at Julian, then tapped the speaker button. "Speak."

A ragged, trembling breath came through the audio, followed by a voice that was barely a shadow of the proud, mocking woman who had stood beside Richard in a silver gown at the Plaza.

"Eleanor?" Sloane Avery’s voice sounded frayed, hollowed out by terror and exhaustion. "Is that... is that really you? They told Richard you were burned alive in the Alps."

"You should know better than to believe Richard Vance, Sloane," I replied coldly. "You learned that lesson the hard way, didn't you?"

A choked sob escaped the line. "He lied to me, Eleanor. He lied about everything. He told me he was divorcing you because you were cold, because you were barren, because you were dead weight. But he never wanted me. He used my family’s banking license in Zurich to launder three billion dollars of Vance debt into offshore shell trusts, and then... then he tried to have me committed to a sanitarium in Geneva to keep me quiet!"

"I know," I said, without a shred of pity. "You were a pawn, Sloane. You let your vanity blind you to the fact that you were sleeping with a parasite."

"I have the master ledgers!" Sloane suddenly blurted out, her voice rising in frantic desperation. "I have Victoria’s shadow accounts—the real ones! The ones she used to pay the mercenary contractors, the bribery logs for the Luxembourg tribunal judges, everything! Richard thinks I’m locked in a private suite at the Royal Palace Hotel in Luxembourg awaiting deportation. If you help me disappear... if you guarantee me immunity and a new identity in South America... I’ll give you the encryption keys to Victoria’s private server right now."

I glanced at Genevieve, who sat in the passenger seat beside Julian. The old matriarch offered a single, dismissive nod.

"Listen to me very carefully, Sloane," I said into the microphone, my tone freezing the digital connection. "You stood beside my husband while he announced the destruction of my marriage in front of three hundred people. You smirked at me while I held those papers. You do not get to negotiate for luxury."

Silence hung heavy on the other end of the line, thick with dread.

"What... what do you want?" Sloane whispered.

"You are going to log into the Luxembourg High Tribunal registry right now using your master compliance credentials," I instructed with absolute authority. "You are going to upload Victoria’s shadow ledgers directly into the public docket before the session opens. You will enter them as State’s Evidence under my name: Eleanor Whitaker."

"If I do that, Victoria will have me killed before I leave the hotel!" Sloane shrieked.

"If you don't do it," I said, leaning closer to the phone, "I will ensure that when Victoria’s empire falls this morning, you are dragged down as the primary co-conspirator. You will spend the next forty years in a federal penitentiary with no money, no name, and no protection. Upload the files, Sloane. Choose who ruins you."

A pause stretched for three agonizing seconds.

"The files... they’re uploading now," Sloane whimpered, the clicking of computer keys audible in the background. "The transmission has started. May God forgive me."

"God might," I said coldly, cutting the call. "I won't."