Chapter 6 - The Trap at Headquarters
While I was leaving the Wolfe estate, Dominic Wolfe was standing in the penthouse office of Wolfe Financial on 5th Avenue, frantically tossing binder after binder into an industrial paper shredder.
The room was in total chaos. Hard drives were stacked on the central conference table, waiting to be wiped with electromagnetic demagnetizers, and two of his personal enforcers were stuffing duffel bags full of hard currency from the floor safe.
"Hurry the hell up!" Dominic yelled, sweat soaking through the collar of his thousand-dollar suit. "The feds are already processing the dock manifests! If they match those shipping codes to the offshore accounts in these binders, we're all going to federal penitentiary!"
Tristan, the fourth brother—a thin, cruel-faced man with a heavy bandage stretched across his broken nose—was smashing a desktop computer with an iron crowbar.
"Where is Dad?" Tristan grunted between strikes. "Why isn't he calling the Governor?! He promised us the Governor would block any federal search warrants!"
"The Governor isn't answering his phone!" Dominic spat, grabbing another stack of financial ledgers. "The Governor’s chief of staff just told our lawyer that if we call him again, he'll issue a press release disavowing any connection to our family! We're on our own!"
Suddenly, the heavy glass doors of the penthouse office swung open.
Dominic whipped his pistol out from his shoulder holster, pointing it toward the entrance. "Who's there?!"
Mason stepped into the room. He was wearing a raincoat, his eyes red-rimmed and hollow, holding a black leather briefcase in his left hand.
"Dominic... stop," Mason said softly, his voice trembling.
Dominic lowered his gun slightly, his face twisting into an expression of pure disgust. "Mason? What the hell are you doing here?! You're supposed to be hiding at The Vault!"
"There's nowhere to hide, Dom," Mason said, taking a step further into the office. "Jack Mercer knows everything. He came to my club. He came to Pier 42. He knows about the money, he knows about the docks... and he knows about what you did to Tessa."
Tristan dropped his crowbar onto the floor with a loud clang. "You talked to him?!"
"He didn't have to break my bones, Tristan!" Mason screamed, tears bursting from his eyes. "He didn't have to! He looked at me, and I saw what we did! We're monsters, Dominic! You smashed that poor woman's arms while she was screaming on the floor! You laughed about it!"
"Shut your mouth!" Dominic roared, stepping across the room and grabbing Mason by the throat, slamming him against the glass wall overlooking the city lights. "Shut your pathetic, sniveling mouth! I did that to protect this family! She was threatening our lease! She broke Tristan’s face!"
"She was defending herself!" Mason gasped, choking under his brother's grip. "You... you brought a hammer to a gym, Dominic! You're insane!"
Dominic tightened his fingers around Mason's windpipe. "I should have left you in the gutter where Dad found you. You're a weak, worthless coward."
"Let him go, Dominic," a calm voice echoed from the hallway outside.
Dominic froze.
Tristan spun around, grabbing his crowbar again.
Two men in sharp dark suits stepped through the doors, followed by ten heavily armed agents wearing blue jackets with three gold letters embroidered across the back: FBI.
At their head was Assistant United States Attorney Sarah Vance—a legendary federal prosecutor who had spent five years trying to nail the Wolfe family.
"Dominic Wolfe," Vance said, holding up a federal search and seizure warrant signed by a chief district judge forty minutes ago. "Step away from your brother and put your hands behind your head."
Dominic’s jaw dropped. "This... this is illegal! You don't have jurisdiction over this building!"
"We have full jurisdiction," Vance countered smoothly, pointing to the duffel bags of hard currency and the stack of un-shredded ledgers on the desk. "Especially when your brother, Mason Wolfe, delivered forty gigabytes of encrypted financial records to my office two hours ago, accompanied by a full signed confession regarding your illegal interstate smuggling operations."
Dominic stared at Mason in absolute, incomprehensible betrayal.
Mason slipped out of Dominic's loosening grip, slumping against the wall, weeping openly into his hands. "I'm sorry, Dom... I had to... I had to save myself..."
"You rat!" Dominic shrieked, reaching for his gun on the desk.
BOOM!
A flash-bang grenade thrown by an FBI tactical officer detonated on the conference table, filling the room with blinding white light and a deafening roar.
Before the smoke even cleared, four tactical officers tackled Dominic and Tristan to the floor, pinning their arms behind their backs and snapping heavy steel handcuffs over their wrists.
Dominic's face was pressed hard against the carpet, right beside the shredded remains of his financial ledgers.
As he was dragged to his feet, bleary-eyed and bleeding from a cut on his forehead, he looked toward the elevator bank across the hall.
Standing beside the emergency exit doors, shadowed by the dim hallway lights, was a man in a black hoodie.
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Jack Mercer didn't say a word. He didn't raise a weapon. He simply raised his right hand, extended two fingers, and touched them to his forehead in a silent, icy military salute.
Dominic’s screams of blind, powerless rage echoed down the elevator shaft all the way to the street below.
