Chapter 4 - The Mouse Trapped in Silk
While the Sterling family began to heal, Julian Vance was panicking inside his eighty-floor penthouse office in downtown Miami.
The news of the disarmed limpet mine had dominated every local radio and television station. Worse, federal agents had raided the offices of Apex Logistics two hours earlier, seizing server hard drives and wire transfer records.
Julian Vance, a handsome fifty-year-old man with silver-streaked hair and expensive tailored suits, paced back and forth across his Italian marble floor.
Opposite him sat Viktor Kross, the scarred mercenary who had planted the bomb.
“You complete idiot!” Vance roared, throwing a crystal whiskey glass against the wall, shattering it into a thousand pieces. “A seven-year-old homeless brat saw you? You let a street rat ruin a three-hundred-million-dollar operation?”
Viktor Kross remained calm, pouring himself a drink from the bar. “The dock was supposed to be clear. The girl was hiding behind fuel drums. I sent my man to find her, but she ran like a jackrabbit into the crowd.”
“The police have your photograph, Viktor!” Vance snarled, grabbing the man by his lapels. “The FBI is tracking the Apex wire transfers! They know the money came from my brother-in-law!”
“Then pay me the rest of my fee, and I disappear to South America tonight,” Kross said coldly, shoving Vance’s hands away. “Five million dollars in Bitcoin. Otherwise, if the FBI catches me... I might start talking about who paid me to blow up the Golden Hour.”
Vance’s eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. He hated being blackmailed, but he knew Kross possessed enough evidence to send him to prison for life.
“Fine,” Vance hissed, walking over to his desk computer. “I will execute the transfer at midnight from my offshore account in Grand Cayman. But you need to eliminate one small problem before you leave Florida.”
Kross raised an eyebrow. “Who?”
Vance pulled up a photograph of seven-year-old Luna on his monitor—a photo snapped by a local news photographer outside the Sterling estate earlier that morning.
“The girl,” Vance said, his voice dropping into a chilling whisper. “She’s the only eyewitness who saw your face under the dock. The police report says her testimony is the anchor of their case. If she dies before she can testify before a grand jury, the FBI’s case against my brother-in-law collapses.”
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Kross smiled—a terrifying, twisted expression across his scarred face.
“Killing a billionaire is expensive,” Kross murmured. “Killing a street orphan... is free.”
