If you come near these children again, I will call the police, Adrian, Maya whispered, her hands trembling as she pulled the double stroller back.
Julian thought he knew every move I would make. He had accounted for my local accounts, my corporate access, even my personal debit cards. What he hadn’t accounted for was my own paranoia, born from years of managing the syndicate’s deeper, shadier secrets.
My old, battered satellite phone, a relic I’d kept from my early days setting up off-book operations, was hidden in the spare tire well of my trunk. Its battery was dead, but I had a charger. I sat in my car in a deserted parking garage, the only sound the hum of the fluorescent lights. The phone whirred to life.
Next, I retrieved the small, cold metal key fob from a hidden compartment beneath the driver’s seat. It wasn’t a physical key. It was a memory key, encrypted with access codes that bypassed standard security protocols—codes I’d created myself as treasury manager for the syndicate’s secondary offshore accounts. The ones so deeply buried even Julian rarely touched them without my direct input.
My fingers flew across the tiny keypad of the satellite phone, accessing a secure portal. It was slow, cumbersome, but it worked. I navigated through layers of encrypted firewalls, bypassing the digital tripwires Julian had undoubtedly set up for my other accounts. The Cayman Islands vault. This was the syndicate’s deepest pool of liquid capital, used for high-stakes fronts and contingency funds.
I started a series of emergency liquidations. The numbers on the screen were staggering. Millions. Fifty million. Forty-two million. This wasn’t petty cash. This was a significant chunk of Julian’s primary front corporations’ operational funds.
Every transaction was routed through a complex web of shell companies I’d previously established, then directed into a single, irrevocable federal escrow account.
I typed in the coordinates, a number I knew by heart: Agent Raymond Cruz.
The funds transferred. Forty-two million dollars, now under the control of the FBI Organized Crime Task Force. I watched the last digits clear, a grim satisfaction settling over me. Julian had stolen $12 million from me. I had just taken $42 million from him. It was a decisive blow, a financial decapitation that would send shockwaves through his entire empire.
The phone rang. It was an unrecognized number, but I picked it up, knowing it could only be one person.
“Moretti,” Agent Cruz’s voice was tight, surprised. “What the hell just happened? My system just flagged forty-two million dollars in transfers from known Moretti shell corporations into a federal holding account.”
“Consider it an advance, Agent,” I said, my voice cold and steady. “On a much larger case. And consider Julian Castaglione officially a very angry man.”
Cruz was silent for a moment. “Angry doesn’t begin to cover it. You just put a crater in his operation. The feds will be moving on those accounts within the hour. Good work. Now, tell me what else you know.”
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