Chapter 10 - The Counter-StrategyThe blood in my veins turned to ice. For a terrifying, breathless second, the secure world I had built with Julian and Emma felt as fragile as spun glass. Marcus was locked behind federal bars, but his shadow—wielded by Chloe’s desperate, vengeful hands—was reaching right into our front yard.
"Evelyn? What is it?" Julian asked, his hand gently touching my arm.
I turned the phone screen toward him. The color drained from his face, replaced by a cold, lethal fury that I had rarely seen in the years I’d known him. The corporate shark was gone; in his place stood a man ready to protect his family by any means necessary.
"She thinks she can intimidate us," I whispered, my voice steadying as adrenaline overtook shock. "She thinks threatening Emma will make us back off the asset recovery."
"She just signed her own arrest warrant," Julian said, pulling out his own phone with deliberate calm. "I'm calling the Director of Federal Enforcement in Boston. We’re upgrading this from a civil asset forfeiture to an active criminal extortion investigation."
"No," I stopped him, placing my hand over his phone. "Not yet. If we involve federal agents right this second, Chloe will go underground permanently, and we'll lose the ledger. We need to draw her out."
Julian looked down at me, his analytical mind immediately catching up to my strategy. "You want to set a trap."
"Exactly," I said, stepping away from the wall. "Chloe’s Achilles' heel has always been her arrogance. She doesn't want to hide forever; she wants her luxurious lifestyle back. She sent that text because she’s running out of cash from the primary accounts and needs us to negotiate a payoff to keep her offshore reserves secret."
"So we play along," Julian realized, a slow, calculated smile touching his lips. "We dangle a compliance settlement in front of her—a virtual carrot that leads directly to a digital IP trap."
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"We let her think she has the upper hand," I nodded, my legal training clicking into overdrive. "I'll draft a dummy settlement agreement under a restricted Rhodes Capital holding entity. We'll set a meeting place—somewhere public, heavily monitored, but isolated enough for her to feel secure."
Within an hour, the Back Bay townhouse had been transformed into an operational command center. While Emma slept peacefully upstairs under the watchful eye of our private security detail, Julian and I sat across the kitchen island with our lead cybersecurity consultant, mapping out the digital snare that would end Chloe’s game once and for all.
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