Chapter 7 - The Final Trap
I burst through the ground-floor exit doors into the snowy alleyway behind the building, gasping for air.
Waiting in the alley was a single black sedan, its engine idling silently.
For a terrifying second, I thought it was another group of Dominic’s men. But then the driver’s side door opened, and Marcus Vance stepped out, accompanied by four heavily armed federal marshals.
“Iris!” Marcus shouted, rushing toward me. “Are you alright?”
“Noah… Noah is still on the fifty-fifth floor!” I gasped, pointing back toward the building. “There are armed men inside!”
“Our tactical team is already going up,” Marcus said, placing a protective hand on my arm and guiding me toward the car. “We tapped Dominic’s communications two hours ago. We knew he was going to attempt a hit tonight.”
Five minutes later, SWAT officers escorted Noah out of the lobby. He was shaken and had a deep cut on his forehead from flying glass, but he was alive and walking under his own power.
When he saw me standing by the federal vehicle, he let out a long breath of relief.
“I told you I was tough, Iris,” Noah said, trying to smile despite the blood trickling down his cheek.
“You’re an idiot,” I said, wrapping my arms around him in a tight hug. “Thank you.”
Marcus walked over, holding a secure satellite phone. “It’s over, Iris. The tactical team secured the building. They captured two of the shooters alive. One of them has already admitted on tape that Dominic Mitchell personally paid them two hundred thousand dollars to kill you and destroy the data servers.”
“Where is Dominic now?” I asked.
Marcus smiled thinly. “Federal marshals are raiding his Winnetka estate right now. He won’t make it to sunrise without handcuffs on.”
The next morning, the city of Chicago woke up to a seismic shift in its political and corporate landscape.
Dominic Mitchell—a man who had ruled the city’s underground financial networks for four decades—was paraded before news cameras in handcuffs, charged under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.
With Dominic in federal custody and Jason facing decades in prison, the Mitchell family’s stranglehold on the city was completely broken.
Three days later, I sat in a private room at the federal courthouse, waiting for the final settlement hearing.
The room was quiet. Across the table sat Jason, dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit, his hands restrained by wrist chains. He looked gaunt, his eyes sunken, his former arrogance completely drained.
His high-priced lawyers had abandoned him when the RICO charges were filed, leaving him with a court-appointed public defender.
“Iris,” Jason said, his voice barely a whisper. “Please.”
I looked at him, feeling no anger, no hatred—only a strange, quiet pity.
“You have five minutes, Jason,” I said flatly. “Make it count.”
“I… I made a mistake,” he stammered, his chained hands shaking on the table. “Uncle Dominic forced me into those offshore deals. He threatened me! You know how he was, Iris! I only did it to protect us!”
“You locked me in Laboratory Four, Jason,” I reminded him, my voice steady and cold. “You stood outside that door, listened to me scream, and walked away so you could take my company and give it to another woman.”
Jason looked down at the metal table, tears spilling over his cheeks. “What’s going to happen to me?”
“You’re going to plead guilty,” I said. “Noah and Marcus have arranged a plea agreement. You will serve twenty-five years without the possibility of parole. In exchange, the state will drop the capital attempted murder charge.”
“Twenty-five years?” he gasped, looking up at me in horror. “I’ll be over fifty when I get out! I’ll have nothing!”
“You’ll have your life, Jason,” I said softly, standing up from the chair. “Which is more than you offered me.”
I adjusted my coat over my shoulders and walked toward the door.
“Iris!” he called out, his voice cracking as the guards stepped forward to pull him up from his chair. “Iris, please look at me! Tell me you once loved me!”
I paused at the door, turned my head slightly, and looked at him one last time.
May you like
“I loved the man I thought you were,” I said. “But that man never existed.”
I opened the door and walked out into the bright light of the corridor, leaving him behind in the dark.
