Chapter 4 - The Rat Trap
The private dining room at L’Ermitage, an exclusive, high-end restaurant in Midtown Manhattan, was dark, quiet, and completely reserved for the evening.
Rain drummed rhythmically against the tinted glass windows overlooking Fifth Avenue.
At eight o'clock sharp, a tall, distinguished man in his early fifties with silvering hair and a tailored charcoal suit walked into the restaurant. He carried a sleek black leather briefcase and moved with the confident, arrogant posture of a man who believed he was always the smartest person in the room.
Victor Croft.
He walked over to the corner booth, expecting to find Celeste sitting there with the signed power-of-attorney documents for my father's remaining assets.
Instead, he found me.
I sat in the red velvet booth, wearing a cream cashmere coat, a glass of vintage Cabernet resting between my fingers.
Victor stopped dead in his tracks, his hand instinctively tightening around the handle of his briefcase. "Who are you? Where is Celeste?"
"Sit down, Victor," I said quietly, gesturing toward the seat opposite me. "Or Mr. Croft, if we're using the name on your British passport."
Victor’s eyes narrowed instantly into slits. He took a step backward toward the door. "I think you have the wrong person, young lady."
"If you walk out that door," I said smoothly, taking a sip of my wine, "the federal marshals waiting in the lobby will arrest you for illegal possession of controlled substances, international wire fraud, and attempted conspiracy to commit murder. But if you sit down, we can talk about how you're going to avoid spending the rest of your life in a supermax facility."
Victor hesitated. He looked toward the heavy oak doors of the restaurant, where two tall men in dark suits subtly stepped into view.
Slowly, calculatingly, Victor walked back to the booth and sat down. He set his briefcase on the leather seat beside him.
"You're Evelyn Ashford," Victor said, his English accent slipping through his fake Canadian demeanor. "The lawyer daughter."
"And you're the chemist who synthesized the digitalis extract Celeste poured into my father's cake last night," I replied, setting my glass down with a soft click.
Victor let out a cold, amused chuckle. "Celeste was always sloppy. Overly dramatic. I told her the slow arsenic regimen was safer, but she wanted the sixty-million-dollar inheritance before the quarter ended."
"You speak about human lives like financial balance sheets, Victor," I noted coldly.
"In our line of work, Miss Ashford, they are balance sheets," Victor said smoothly, leaning forward, placing his elbows on the table. "So let's be pragmatic. What do you want? Celeste is already burnt. She's in jail. You saved your precious father. Why summon me here?"
"I summoned you here because you have something I need," I said, reaching into my handbag and pulling out a document folder. "You have the master cryptographic key to the offshore accounts in the Cook Islands where forty-five million dollars of my family's money is currently sitting."
Victor smiled, a cruel, mocking expression. "And why on earth would I give you the key? That money is encrypted with a twenty-four-word seed phrase stored only in my head. Without it, even the FBI can't touch those funds for ten years."
"You'll give me the key," I said, leaning in, "because five minutes ago, the Southern District of New York seized your mother’s estate in Devon, arrested your younger brother in London for laundering your funds, and froze every single bank account associated with your offshore network."
Victor’s smile vanished completely. His face went pale, his eyes wide with sudden, genuine shock. "You... you can't touch UK jurisdiction—"
"I worked with Scotland Yard's Fraud Squad for two years when I was at Covington & Burling, Victor," I interrupted, pulling out my tablet and sliding it across the table. "The extradition papers have already been signed by a High Court judge in London. You aren't just facing American charges. You're facing three life sentences in Her Majesty's Prison Service for the murder of Julian Sterling eight years ago."
Victor stared at the tablet screen, where a video feed showed British police officers carrying boxes of evidence out of his family’s estate in England.
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The silver briefcase in his hand slipped, hitting the carpeted floor with a heavy, dull thud.
"You have ten seconds to type the seed phrase into this tablet, Victor," I said, my voice dead, cold, and utterly uncompromising. "Or I walk out this door and let the extradition officers take you directly to JFK Airport."
