My husband had me locked in a windowless subterranean holding room beneath our Chicago estate, claiming I had suffered a severe psychotic break.
O’Leary stopped a few feet from me, his presence solid and unyielding. He ignored Julian and Evelyn, who continued to bluster and plead from the floor.
He looked at my face, then at the heavy leg irons still clamped around my ankles. A flicker of recognition crossed his features.
“Maya Hendricks,” he said, his voice surprisingly soft, a low rumble. “South Side logistics. Before you disappeared into the high-rises.”
My heart gave a sharp jolt. He knew my past. A past I had meticulously hidden from Julian, from everyone in my new life. My years as a teenage courier for his own network, a prodigy in tracking and delivery.
“You grew up knowing the code,” O’Leary continued, his gaze unwavering. “Never steal from the hand that feeds you. Never betray your own.”
I nodded, my throat tight. “I never did, Mr. O’Leary.”
I held out the encrypted receiver, its screen still displaying Julian’s damning texts. “Julian Montgomery took your money. He tried to frame me for it, then incinerate me to erase the evidence.”
I then handed him a small, physical USB drive, the one Felix had covertly given me when he installed the comms receiver. “This contains Julian’s real banking passkeys. Every offshore account. Every routing number. The original transfer logs, not the falsified ones.”
O’Leary took the drive, his fingers closing around it. He didn’t need to verify it. He knew.
He looked at Julian with cold disgust, a predator eyeing weak prey. Julian had tried to use a street-born girl, someone from O’Leary’s own unofficial world, as a disposable shield against a syndicate murder charge. This was not just theft; it was a fundamental breach of every unspoken street code.
“You knew her history,” O’Leary said to Julian, his voice dropping to a dangerous hush. “You knew who she was. And you thought you could use her as a fall girl.”
Julian stammered, trying to find an excuse. “I… I didn’t know, Marcus! She hid it from me!”
O’Leary’s eyes, dark and flat, gave Julian his answer. It was irrelevant. The betrayal was absolute.
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