Chapter 2 - Seven Seconds to Panic
"Audrey? What kind of sick joke is this?"
Daniel's voice blasted through the phone speaker, stripped of all its previous cocky arrogance, replaced instantly by the screeching, high-pitched terror of a man whose entire world had just dissolved beneath his feet. In the background, I could hear the faint, frantic announcements of the airport terminal paging first-class passengers for boarding.
I took another slow sip of my espresso, letting the silence stretch out like a slow-acting poison. Every second of quiet agony I gave him was a repayment for the years of gaslighting, quiet contempt, and betrayal he thought he had successfully hidden behind my back.
"No joke, Daniel," I replied, my voice smooth as glass, completely devoid of emotion. "Though I have to admit, your acting skills are almost as pathetic as your choice in accomplices. How is Chloe holding up? Is she enjoying the sparkling glass on her wrist? Because I can assure you, by the time airport security catches up with her, she'll realize those diamonds are insured corporate property under federal investigation."
"You're bluffing!" Daniel choked out, his breath coming in ragged, desperate gasps. I could picture him standing right there in the glittering terminal, frantically tapping at his phone screen, trying to log into our master banking app only to be met with a cold, unyielding error code. "I transferred the portfolios! I have the bearer bonds! I cleared the primary vault ourselves! You were asleep, Audrey! I watched you—you were completely out!"
"Sedated?" I let out a low, cold laugh that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, even across a digital connection. "Daniel, darling, do you really think a woman who manages a multi-billion-dollar global logistics network doesn't know how to metabolize a mild sleeping draft before her husband tries to rob her blind? I watched you through my eyelashes. Watching you stuff counterfeit bills and tracked bearer bonds into a duffel bag was the best entertainment I've had all year."
"Counterfeit?!" His voice cracked, rising to a panicked shriek that caused heads to turn around him in the terminal. I could practically see the cold sweat beading on his forehead. "That's impossible! I took them straight from the wall safe! That's eight billion dollars!"
"Correction," I corrected smoothly, leaning back against the marble kitchen island as the morning sun flooded the room. "That was eight billion dollars of frozen corporate liquidity tied directly to my mother's estate trust. The moment you scanned those bearer bonds at the private terminal's terminal kiosk to clear customs, your digital footprint tripped an automated Interpol flag. The accounts didn't just freeze, Daniel. They locked down with a federal warrant attached to your personal passport."
Silence crashed over the line. Heavy, suffocating, absolute silence.
For a terrifying moment, Daniel didn't say a word. I could hear the distant roar of a jet engine spooling up outside the terminal windows, a cruel reminder of how close he had come to freedom, and how thoroughly I had slammed the iron gate shut in his face.
"Audrey... please," Daniel whispered, his voice dropping into a pathetic, trembling whine. All the bluster, all the arrogant superiority he had worn like a tailored suit just minutes ago had completely evaporated, leaving behind the whimpering, weak-willed coward he had always truly been beneath the expensive surface. "We can fix this. We're husband and wife. Don't do this. Think of our life together—"
"Our life?" I interrupted, my tone freezing over into absolute ice. "You packed your bags at two in the morning, kissed my forehead like a cheap villain in a bad melodrama, and ran off with my mother's memory and our company's future to live out some pathetic fantasy with Chloe. You made your choice, Daniel. Now, you get to live with the audit."
Before he could scream another plea, I tapped the red end-call button, severing the connection instantly.
I set the phone down on the counter and looked out the massive floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking our manicured estate. But as satisfying as breaking Daniel's little criminal joyride felt, my mind was already racing miles ahead. Daniel's amateurish heist wasn't an isolated incident. The corporate forensic audit I had been running for the past three weeks had uncovered something infinitely darker, something much bigger than a cheating husband stealing cash from a wall safe. Daniel wasn't smart enough to orchestrate an eight-billion-dollar asset diversion on his own. Someone else was pulling his strings from the shadows, a hidden player within the board of directors who had engineered this entire catastrophe.
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And as I picked up my coffee cup to take another sip, my phone buzzed again. It wasn't Daniel. It was an encrypted text message from an unknown IP address, containing a single file attachment and a chilling three-word sentence:
"He's working for them."
