Chapter 3 - Blood in the Water
Z
The transfer took place forty miles off the coast of Key West. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, accompanied by Homeland Security Maritime Interdiction units, boarded The Sovereign under the cover of dense pre-dawn fog. Flynn was brought up from the hold first. His once-immaculate linen shirt was soaked in sweat and grime, his golden hair matted against his forehead. When his eyes found mine standing beside the federal agents, a sickening look of desperate calculation washed over his features.
“Mabel! Honey, listen to me!” he screamed, thrashing against the heavy grip of two federal marshals. “My father threatened to kill me if I didn’t follow the plan! He owes thirty million to the Russian syndicates! I was trying to protect you! I swapped the real lethal dose for mild sedatives so you wouldn’t get hurt!”
“Shut your mouth, Flynn,” Special Agent Miller barked, shoving him against the steel bulkhead and securing titanium zip-ties around his ankles.
I stepped closer to him, stopping mere inches from his trembling face. The smell of fear rolling off him was suffocating. “You told your mother you’d push me off the stern, Flynn. You laughed about it while drinking my father’s vintage Cristal. Did your Russian syndicate make you laugh, too?”
Flynn’s face drained of what little color remained. He looked past me toward Aidan, who was being marched up the stairs in full tactical restraints.
“You coward!” Aidan roared at his son, spitting saliva across the deck. “You couldn’t even close the deal on a drugged girl! You ruined us! We gave you everything, you incompetent parasite!”
“You forced me into this, you old bastard!” Flynn shrieked back, lunging toward his father despite the chains binding his wrists. “You were the one who contacted Julian Vance! You sold our names to Vanguard!”
Agent Miller glanced at me, raising an eyebrow at the immediate confession echoing across the deck. Every word was being recorded by the body cameras mounted to the tactical vests of four federal officers.
“Put them in separate transport helicopters,” Miller ordered. “Get the mother on the cutter. I want total sensory deprivation until we touch down at the federal detention center in downtown Miami.”
As the agents dragged Flynn toward the awaiting chopper, Fiona looked back at me. The polished, elegant matriarch who had helped me pick out my custom lace veil had completely unraveled. Her manicured nails were broken, her eyes wide and wild with venomous rage.
“You think you won, you stupid little brat?” Fiona hissed, her voice sounding like a feral cat. “You think your family’s money makes you untouchable? Julian Vance already owns forty percent of your father’s voting stock! By the time we get to trial, the Sterling name won’t be worth the paper it’s printed on! You’re going to lose everything anyway!”
I didn’t blink. I simply watched as the agents forced her head down into the cabin of the secondary aircraft.
Two hours later, I was seated in the back of an armored black Suburban speeding down the MacArthur Causeway toward the federal courthouse. Vance was in the passenger seat, his laptop open, running real-time surveillance feeds of the New York Stock Exchange pre-market trading desk.
“Fiona wasn’t bluffing,” Vance said, turning the screen toward me. “Look at this. Vanguard Horizon just initiated a massive short position against Sterling Global shares. They’re dumping millions into the market, trying to trigger an automated margin call before your father can reach the board meeting in Manhattan.”
“They think I’m dead,” I whispered, realization clicking into place like the hammer of a gun. “Flynn was supposed to send the confirmation signal at midnight. Vanguard launched their hostile takeover assuming my father would be incapacitated by grief over my disappearance.”
“Exactly,” Vance replied. “Julian Vance thinks he’s stepping into a boardroom void. He has no idea the Coast Guard intercepted the yacht, and he has no idea Flynn is already singing to federal prosecutors.”
I pulled out my phone and dialed the chief communications officer of the Sterling Group.
May you like
“Cancel all scheduled press releases,” I instructed cleanly, watching the palm trees of Miami blur past the tinted windows. “Call an emergency press conference at the Federal Plaza in forty-five minutes. Inform every major financial network—Bloomberg, CNBC, Reuters. Tell them the sole heiress to Sterling Global has a live statement regarding corporate espionage and attempted homicide.”
I hung up and leaned back against the leather seat. Flynn and his family thought they were playing a high-stakes game of inheritance theft. But they had handed me the smoking gun, and I was about to fire it straight into the heart of Wall Street.
