Chapter 15 - The Rat in the Gutter
Before we could touch the vault in Saint-Moritz, there was one loose thread that needed burning.
Three hours before our arrival, Daniel had arranged an encrypted video link to the Federal Detention Center in lower Manhattan. Marcus had ensured the feed was entirely private, bypassing the prison’s standard recording logs through a court-approved judicial order.
The screen lit up to reveal Grant sitting in a metal interrogation room.
Gone were the bespoke Italian suits, the slicked-back pomade, and the arrogant smirk that had once defined the man I had mistakenly loved. Grant wore a faded orange jumpsuit. His eyes were bloodshot, his stubble was patchy, and his hands shook as he stared into the mounted camera.
"Claire?" His voice came through the speaker, cracked and hollow. "Claire! Oh God, thank God you picked up. You have to get me out of here. Please. They’re putting me in general population tomorrow. The bail—Daniel set my bail at twenty million dollars, cash only! I don't have twenty dollars!"
I watched him quietly, swirling a porcelain cup of black coffee. I said nothing.
The silence terrified him more than any scream ever could.
"Claire, listen to me!" Grant pleaded, leaning so close his face distorted against the wide-angle lens. "Sabrina lied to me! She set me up! She took the offshore account keys—she had a second encrypted ledger that I never saw! She was working with someone else!"
"I know she was," I said, my voice smooth and devoid of pity. "She was working for Arthur Sterling. And so were you, Grant. You were just too stupid to realize you were the bait."
Grant froze. The color drained from his already pale face until he looked like a corpse. "S-Sterling? The industrialist? I... I never met him. I only dealt with a man named Laurent. He gave me the dummy corporation codes. He told me you were soft, Claire! He told me you inherited an empire you didn't know how to run, and that if I took control of Vance Global, Wall Street would see me as the real genius!"
"You actually believed you were a genius, didn't you?" I asked, a slight, mocking tilt to my head. "You took my money, my jet, my father’s legacy, and you strutted around town thinking you earned it. You let another woman sit in my seat and told me to remember my place."
"I was an idiot! I was blind!" Grant sobbed, tears cutting dirty tracks through the grime on his cheeks. "Claire, we were married for five years! Doesn't that count for anything? You loved me once! Please... Laurent called my burner phone before they arrested me. He told me that if I opened my mouth about Aegis Horizon, I’d be found hanging in my cell."
"Then you should pray Daniel’s legal team keeps you in that cell forever," I replied coldly. "Because out here, Arthur Sterling doesn't leave loose ends."
"Wait! Claire, don't hang up!" Grant screamed, slamming his cuffed hands against the metal table. "I have something! Before Laurent cut the server, I copied a string of routing transfers onto an external cold-storage key! I hid it... I hid it inside the lining of my golf bag in the penthouse!"
"My penthouse," I corrected him.
"Yes, your penthouse! Take it! Take whatever is on that drive, just tell the U.S. Attorney to put me into witness protection! Don't let them kill me, Claire!"
I leaned forward, looking into the eyes of the man who had tried to break my spirit, the man who had treated me like an inconvenient ornament in my own home.
"You remember when you told me that power belongs to those who take it, Grant?" I asked softly.
Grant choked on his own breath, nodding desperately.
"You took nothing," I said. "You were given crumbs by an old man waiting to slaughter you. Daniel will retrieve the drive. If the data is useful, I might let you stay in a federal prison with armed guards instead of turning you out into the street where Sterling's men can find you. Consider that my final act of charity as your wife."
I tapped the screen and disconnected the call, leaving him screaming into the void.
Daniel walked into the cabin’s forward compartment, holding a secure satellite tablet. "Marcus just retrieved the drive from the penthouse. Our cyber team broke the encryption in under ten minutes."
"What's on it?"
Daniel looked up, his jaw clenched so tight the tendons stood out.
May you like
"The flight records of Henry Vance’s private helicopter from the night he died twelve years ago. Grant didn't know what he had. Claire... Arthur Sterling wasn't just Henry's business partner. He was on that helicopter twenty minutes before it crashed in the Swiss pass."
***
