Chapter 6 - The Unmasking
Gasps echoing around the room sounded like a collective intake of air. Two captains stumbled backward, clutching their chest as if seeing a spirit from the underworld.
Victor Vance’s face drained of every drop of color. His jaw worked uselessly, his eyes bulging as he stared at the woman he believed he had eliminated two months ago.
"I-Isabella...?" Victor stammered, his hands shaking so violently that his pen clattered against the glass table. "You... you were... the crash..."
"The crash failed, Victor," Isabella said, her voice ringing clear and steady through the tense boardroom. "And so did your attempt to execute me at the freight station yesterday."
"This... this is an impostor!" Victor shrieked, backing toward the floor-to-ceiling windows behind his chair. "Lorenzo, she's a fake! Your wife is dead! I saw the medical reports!"
"You paid the medical examiner fifty thousand dollars to alter those reports, Victor," Lorenzo said smoothly, taking a slow, heavy step toward his former CFO. "Just like you paid sixty thousand to the driver who brought a corpse from the municipal morgue to burn in my wife's car."
Lorenzo tossed a thick white binder onto the center of the conference table.
"In that binder are the complete banking records decrypted from your Delaware shell company," Lorenzo continued. "Eighty million dollars stolen from my family. The wire transfers bear your personal cryptographic key."
The loyal captains turned their eyes toward Victor, their expressions shifting from shock to pure, murderous rage.
Frank Moretti, the Chicago boss, looked at Victor, then at Lorenzo's armed strike team. He slowly raised his hands, stepping back from the table. "Lorenzo... we were lied to. Victor told us you were stepping down voluntarily and selling the shipping lines. Chicago has no quarrel with you."
"Your quarrel with me depends on how fast you leave my city, Frank," Lorenzo said without looking at him. "Take your men and get out. Now."
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Moretti didn't wait to be told twice. He and his enforcers backed into the service elevator and disappeared.
Victor was left entirely alone, backed against the glass wall of the fifty-story penthouse, facing Lorenzo and twelve furious captains.
