Chapter 2 - The House of Lies
Vanessa Whitmore looked as if she had been struck by lightning.
"Canceled?!" she screamed, stepping forward, ignoring the blood dripping onto her cream dress. "Dominic! Are you insane?! My father owns forty percent of the Northwest Rail Freight Corridor! Your family needs our capital to finalize the harbor expansion! You can't throw me away for a dirty delivery driver!"
"Your father's rail shares were transferred to a neutral holding company in Zug, Switzerland, at three o'clock this afternoon," Dominic replied without emotion. "And as of nine-thirty tonight, your father is being held in a federal detention facility in Milwaukee on nineteen counts of corporate espionage and money laundering."
Vanessa stumbled backward, her eyes widening in unadulterated terror. "What... what are you talking about?!"
"You didn't ask Avery Carter to deliver food to this house seven times over the last six weeks because you wanted warm soup, Vanessa," Dominic said, turning his back on his former fiancée and walking toward the grand fireplace. He picked up a heavy, brass poker resting beside the hearth. "You requested her because you knew who her father was."
Avery felt her pulse spike. She took a step toward Dominic. "What does my father have to do with this?"
Dominic didn't answer right away. He raised the heavy brass poker and slammed it with crushing force into the decorative oak paneling beside the fireplace.
CRACK.
The expensive mahogany shattered. Wood splinters rained onto the marble floor. Behind the shattered paneling sat a hidden, steel-reinforced digital safe equipped with a biometric keypad and a hardwired secondary transceiver.
Dominic thrust his hand into the shattered recess, ripped out a small, blinking black electronic device about the size of a deck of cards, and tossed it into the middle of the ballroom floor.
"A military-grade long-range signal repeater," Dominic stated, looking at the stunned crowd. "Linked directly to an illegal server bank operating out of a private yacht currently anchored four miles off Navy Pier."
He looked back at Vanessa.
"For three months, someone has been broadcasting the internal shipping manifests of the Moretti Logistics network directly to the Russian Bratva syndicate in Brighton Beach," Dominic said. "Every time a weapons shipment, a luxury vehicle transport, or a federal government cargo container moved through my ports, the Russians knew the exact route, the guard rotations, and the GPS coordinates."
Vanessa began shaking so violently she had to hold onto the iron banister of the staircase to stay upright.
"You needed a scapegoat," Dominic continued, his eyes locked onto Vanessa like an executioner's. "Someone with physical access to the estate. Someone with a personal connection to the Moretti family history. Someone whose father died under mysterious circumstances in my father's warehouse eight years ago."
Avery stared at the blinking black box on the floor, then looked at Vanessa.
"You set me up," Avery realized, the horrifying truth dawning on her with crystal clarity. "Every time you made me wait in the hallway... every time you made me stand outside... you were using my delivery phone’s auto-pinging GPS signal to mask the data transfers from that illegal box!"
"She's a genius, isn't she?" Dominic said, a dark, dangerous smile touching his lips. "If the federal authorities traced the signal leaks to this mansion, they would find a delivery driver whose father was a disgraced cop, sitting outside in a rusty sedan every single time a data packet was uploaded. The perfect, desperate suspect."
"It wasn't me!" Vanessa wept, falling to her knees on the floor. "Dominic, please! My father made me do it! They threatened to kill my brother! They said if I didn't install the transceiver, they’d burn our family to the ground!"
"Your brother," Dominic noted coldly, "spent three hundred thousand dollars of Russian money at a casino in Macao last night. He didn't look very threatened."
Dominic motioned to his security detail. "Take her upstairs. Lock her in the wine cellar. Stripped of all electronic devices. If she attempts to speak, gag her."
"Dominic! DOMINIC!" Vanessa shrieked as the two towering security men grabbed her under the arms and dragged her kicking and screaming up the grand staircase. Her frantic cries faded down the long, carpeted hallways of the upper floors until a heavy door slammed shut.
The sixty guests stood in terrified silence, staring at the floor, terrified to move or make a sound.
Dominic turned back to his guests. "The party is over. You will leave your phones, your car keys, and your outer coats on the table in the foyer. My men will search every vehicle before you leave this property. Anyone who speaks to the press or the authorities before sunrise will find their business assets liquidated by noon tomorrow."
Within ninety seconds, the ballroom was completely empty of guests. The wealthy elite of Chicago scrambled over each other to leave their belongings on the foyer table, fleeing into the torrential rain outside as if escaping a burning building.
Only three people remained in the vast, echoing room: Dominic, Avery, and a gray-haired, stern-faced man wearing an tailored suit standing silently by the doorway—Dominic’s chief of operations, Frank.
Dominic turned to face Avery.
"You have frosting on your jacket," he said softly.
Avery pulled off her wet delivery jacket, tossing it onto the marble floor beside Vanessa’s shattered glass. "My father didn't die in an industrial accident eight years ago, did he?"
May you like
Dominic looked at her for a long, quiet moment. Then he gestured toward the double doors leading to his private study.
"No," Dominic said quietly. "He died saving my life. And it's time you learned the truth about why your mother's medical bills have been paid for the last three years."
