Chapter 52 - The Broken Aristocrat
"I intend to give him the money, Victor," Emily stated, leaning closer to the thick acrylic partition. "But the funds are locked in the Swiss escrow account. The system requires your biometric retinal scan to initiate the transfer. And since I cannot legally extract your eyeball from this facility, we have a massive problem."
Victor stared at her, a pathetic, broken laugh escaping his dry lips. "You want me to help you? After you destroyed my life, dismantled my empire, and put me in this hellhole?"
"I didn't destroy your life," Emily corrected him fiercely. "Your own monstrous greed did that. I simply survived it. And right now, I am offering you the only chance you have to survive this prison."
Victor frowned, his brow furrowing in desperate confusion. "What do you mean?"
"El Fantasma has undoubtedly placed a massive bounty on your head inside these walls," Emily explained, watching the realization dawn on Victor's face. "You are marked for death because you lost his money. But if you give me the physical backup key to bypass the biometric lock on the Swiss account, I will initiate the transfer. Once El Fantasma gets his money, the bounty on your head disappears. You might actually live to see the end of your twenty-five-year sentence."
Victor swallowed hard, his trembling hands gripping the receiver so tightly his knuckles turned white. He was a cornered animal, weighing his utter hatred for Emily against his primal instinct to survive.
"There is a physical bypass drive," Victor finally whispered, his voice barely audible over the static of the phone line. "I never trusted pure biometrics. I kept a heavily encrypted USB key that acts as a master override for the Swiss account."
"Where is it?" Emily demanded, her heart hammering with anticipation.
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"It isn't in Mexico," Victor confessed, closing his eyes in defeat. "It is secured in a private safety deposit box at the Zürcher Kantonalbank in Zurich. Box 814. The access code is the date of our canceled wedding."
Emily felt a surge of triumphant adrenaline. The key to ending the war was within their grasp.
