Chapter 14 - The Shadow of the Nest
Defeat did not cause Richard Montgomery to retreat; it drove him into a corner like a rabid animal.
Stripped of his legal gambit and facing potential federal indictments for document forgery, Richard holed up in his pent-house apartment overlooking Lincoln Park, drinking heavily while his legal team abandoned him one by one.
At 11:00 PM on January 8th, Richard sat opposite a shadowy figure in a dark lounge on Rush Street—a disgraced former private investigator named Donald Vance (no relation to Dr. Marcus Vance), who specialized in off-the-books corporate extortion.
"They're going to put me away, Donald," Richard snarled, slamming a glass of rye whiskey onto the table. "That ungrateful girl and her arrogant husband have backed me into a corner. If I go down, I'm taking them down with me."
Donald swirled his drink, his cold eyes calculating. "Ethan’s security around the Wilmette house is military-grade. You can't touch him or the girl directly. The place is locked down like Fort Knox."
"I don't want to touch Ethan," Richard spat, his eyes gleaming with unhinged malice. "I want to destroy his peace. I want to hit the one thing he didn't secure."
Donald raised an eyebrow. "And what's that?"
"The original family archives stored in the old Montgomery carriage house in Lake Forest," Richard revealed, leaning forward. "Claire’s father kept his personal journals, her mother’s medical records, and the original hand-drawn blueprints of the first logistics hub in that vault. Claire’s father left her those personal letters before he passed. She’s been planning to open a memorial library in his honor next month."
"You want to burn the papers?" Donald asked.
"I want to burn the whole building," Richard sneered. "I want to turn her father's memories into ash before the state police take my assets. I want her to know that even if she wins in court, I destroyed the only part of her father she had left."
Donald grinned, a dark, crooked line across his face. "Half a million upfront. The fire starts at midnight tomorrow."
What Richard didn't realize was that every transaction originating from his remaining frozen bank accounts was being monitored in real-time.
Inside the Wilmette home, Ethan sat in his study with Sarah Hayes and Marcus Vance, watching a red flag flash on his monitor.
"He just withdrew five hundred thousand dollars from his emergency offshore line," Sarah Hayes said. "He’s hiring someone."
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Ethan didn't flinch. He looked at the satellite map of the old Lake Forest carriage house—the place where Claire had spent her childhood summers with her father.
"He thinks he’s playing a game of destruction," Ethan said, standing up and pulling his dark leather coat from the rack. "Let's go catch a arsonist."
