Chapter 20
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The visit from Thorne’s corrupt inspector confirmed my worst fears: Marcus Thorne was not just wealthy, he was deeply embedded in the systemic corruption of the state. He could manipulate local agencies, fabricate legal mandates, and wield bureaucracy like a weapon. If we merely played defense behind our gates, it was only a matter of time before he found a legal loophole to tear the sanctuary apart.
I needed to sever the head of the snake.
Late that evening, after the sanctuary was asleep and the house was plunged into a quiet, heavily guarded stillness, David Vance arrived at the estate. He bypassed the main entrance, pulling his unassuming sedan into the service garage in the back.
David walked into my study carrying a thick, heavily encrypted laptop. He looked exhausted, having spent the last seventy-two hours tearing through the darkest corners of Nashville's financial networks.
"You were right, Connor," David sighed, placing the laptop on my desk and pulling up a complex web of corporate routing numbers. "Marcus Thorne is a monster, but he is a sloppy one. His real estate development firm is nothing but a massive, sophisticated laundering operation for an organized crime syndicate operating out of the Gulf Coast."
"Can we prove it?" I asked, leaning over the desk to study the screen.
"I traced over forty million dollars in illicit funds moving through three of his shell companies in the last fiscal year alone," David explained, pointing to a specific cluster of offshore accounts. "He uses anonymous LLCs to buy derelict commercial properties, massively inflates the construction costs, and washes the cartel money through fake vendor invoices."
"If we hand this to the FBI, they will raid his offices," I noted, a surge of adrenaline cutting through my fatigue.
"They will," David agreed. "But federal investigations take time to mobilize. Warrants have to be drafted, judges have to be briefed. Best case scenario, it takes two weeks to execute a raid based on this data. Thorne isn't going to wait two weeks to come after his wife."
"He sent a scout today," I revealed, pouring two glasses of bourbon and handing one to David. "He knows she is here. He is going to escalate."
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"If he knows you have her, and he knows you aren't intimidated by his municipal goons, he is going to resort to violence," David warned, taking a sip of the amber liquid. "He cannot afford for Nora to testify against him. She knows too much about his private meetings. If the feds get to her, his entire laundering operation collapses. She is an existential threat to his freedom."
"Then we don't wait for the feds," I said, setting my glass down with a definitive click. "We force his hand. We make Thorne panic, and we trap him when he makes a mistake."
