My husband had me locked in a windowless subterranean holding room beneath our Chicago estate, claiming I had suffered a severe psychotic break.
The shriek of the thermal purge alarm was abruptly silenced as the facility’s high-voltage lines were cut, plunging the bunker into a deafening silence. Sarah must have coordinated with her operators.
Then, a new sound: heavy, deliberate footsteps descending the shattered freight stairs. Marcus O’Leary and three silent enforcers appeared in the opening.
O’Leary was a man who commanded presence without a single shouted word. He moved with the quiet confidence of someone who owned every space he occupied. He held physical printouts of transaction records in his hand, the ones Sarah had forwarded to him just twenty minutes prior.
Behind him, Evelyn Montgomery was brought down, her wrists secured with zip-ties. Her tailored silk gown was covered in soot from the breached perimeter gates, her once-perfect hair now disheveled. She looked frantic, her eyes darting around the ruined bunker, a desperate animal trapped.
“O’Leary,” she stammered, spotting him. Her voice, usually so composed, was thin and reedy. “Marcus, please! There’s been a terrible misunderstanding! Julian acted alone, a foolish mistake! I can… I can double the amount! Whatever he took, I’ll pay you back. One hundred million, liquid assets, right now!”
O’Leary didn’t even glance at her. He walked past Evelyn as if she were furniture, his gaze sweeping the corridor. It landed on Julian, cowering on the floor, then settled on me.
He didn’t speak, but his eyes held a cold, assessing intelligence. He wasn’t interested in Evelyn’s pleas, her money, or her frantic offers. He was interested in the truth. And he was interested in me.
The air in the subterranean corridor crackled with a new, dangerous power. The Montgomerys, for all their wealth, were utterly impotent in the face of Marcus O’Leary.
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