Chapter 20 - THE UNSEEN SHADOW|
Three months later.
The fall breeze blew softly through the courtyard outside the Federal Courthouse in downtown Chicago.
I stood without my crutches for the first time, wearing a simple navy suit, watching the swarm of news reporters surrounding the courthouse steps.
Victor Vance, Uncle Richard, and Adrian Prescott had all been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The Erebus syndicate was dismantled, its assets seized, and its victims compensated.
Detective Marcus—who had miraculously survived the boathouse firefight thanks to a heavy kevlar vest—walked up beside me, handing me a warm cup of coffee.
"You did it, Hannah," Marcus smiled, looking at the headline on the newspaper in his hand: EMPIRE OF LIES FALLS. "You brought down the biggest political corruption ring in state history."
"We did it, Marcus," I corrected, taking a sip of the coffee. "It's finally over."
"Is it?" Marcus asked, his smile slowly fading into a serious, guarded expression.
I frowned, looking at him. "What do you mean?"
Marcus pulled a sealed Manila evidence envelope from his coat pocket and handed it to me.
"We finished processing the offshore servers seized from Erebus Holdings in Grand Cayman yesterday," Marcus said, his voice dropping to a low whisper. "We traced the ultimate parent company that funded Erebus from the very beginning."
I opened the envelope, pulling out a single sheet of paper containing an encrypted organizational chart.
At the very top of the hierarchy, sitting far above Governor Victor Vance, was a master account labeled Sovereign Prime.
"Victor wasn't the owner," I whispered, my heart plummeting back into a pit of cold dread. "He was just a manager."
"And look at the last transaction recorded on the Sovereign account," Marcus pointed to the bottom of the page.
The transaction was dated three days ago—long after Victor, Adrian, and Richard were safely locked away behind bars.
It was a payment of ten million dollars, wired to an elite international assassin agency, accompanied by a singleMemo field:
TERMINATE HANNAH VANCE.
My phone in my coat pocket vibrated once.
I pulled it out with trembling fingers and opened the new text message from an unknown number.
It was a real-time photograph of me and Marcus standing on the courthouse steps... captured from an elevated sniper position across the street.
May you like
Attached was a single line of text:
“THE BOARD HAS NOT FINISHED YOUR AUDIT, HANNAH.”
