Chương 4 - The Hunt & The Interrogation
Julian stood frozen in the doorway, his chest heaving, his manicured hands trembling against the fabric of his trousers. The air in the room felt pressurized, heavy with the terrifying finality of an ambush.
“Genevieve...” he whispered, taking a stumbling step forward. The two federal marshals did not move to stop him; they merely tracked him with cold, professional detachment, their hands resting loosely near their weapons. “You’re... you’re alive. My God, you’re alive! They told me you were in critical condition! They told me—”
“They told you I had fifteen percent brain function and that the abruption had killed the baby,” I interrupted, my voice dropping like a lead weight into the silence. I didn't blink. I didn't raise my voice. The clinical calm was far more terrifying than rage. “That’s what you were waiting to hear, wasn't it? So the supplemental life insurance policy Marcus Kane drafted could pay out the full ten million with the accidental death rider.”
Julian’s gaze darted toward Kane, who had remained near the elevator, utterly paralyzed.
“No! No, darling, that’s insane!” Julian stepped closer to the mahogany table, trying desperately to summon the charming, pleading smile that had disarmed me for six years. He reached across the glass partition, his hands outstretched. “Victoria poisoned you! She switched your vitamins! I found the empty blister packs in her suite after the authorities arrived! I was trying to save you, Genevieve! I stood on that dock screaming for the Coast Guard—I’m the one who alerted them!”
Arthur Montgomery didn't move an inch, but the temperature in the room dropped ten degrees.
“Son,” Arthur said, the single syllable vibrating with enough concussive force to make Julian flinch, “if you utter another lie in my presence, the marshals outside will not be able to protect you from what I will do to your throat.”
Julian swallowed, his throat clicking audibly. His gaze shifted from my father’s four-star insignia to Eleanor, whose cold, aristocratic face offered even less mercy.
“Genevieve, please,” Julian begged, dropping to one knee beside the boardroom table—a calculated display of absolute submission. “Look at me. We have a child together! How is the baby? Where is our daughter? Let me see her!”
“You will never see her,” I said. Every syllable was precise, cut with surgical steel. “Her name is Clara Montgomery. Your name does not appear on her birth certificate. A federal judge signed the emergency termination of your parental rights four hours ago, citing attempted capital murder and aggravated child endangerment.”
Julian flinched as though I had struck him across the mouth. The realization that his leverage was gone—that the baby he had viewed as either an anchor to keep me compliant or collateral for an insurance settlement was entirely out of his reach—finally shattered his composure.
“You can’t do that,” he hissed, the subservient mask slipping, revealing the venomous narcissist beneath. “I am your husband! Under California law, Vance Logistics is community property! You can’t seize my corporate accounts! You can’t bring military personnel into a private civil dispute!”
Eleanor finally laid down her fountain pen. The sharp *click* of the metal cap against the marble table sounded like the cocking of a pistol.
“Vance Logistics ceased to be your property thirty minutes ago, Mr. Vance,” Eleanor said smoothly. She slid a thick document across the table. “Providence Maritime Holdings was established thirty-two years ago by my family. When Genevieve was twenty-two, the trust transferred primary beneficial ownership to her. When you squandered six million dollars on bad freight derivatives three years ago, Genevieve didn't want you to feel emasculated. So she instructed our asset managers to bail you out through an anonymous debt acquisition.”
Julian stared at the blue-backed document. His eyes frantically scanned the corporate signature lines.
There, at the bottom of the original 2022 loan agreement that had kept Vance Logistics afloat, was the signature of the primary managing partner: *Genevieve Montgomery-Vance.*
“You owned the debt?” Julian gasped, his voice a pathetic squeak. “You... you owned the company the entire time?”
“I owned seventy-two percent of your debt covenants,” I said, leaning forward, resting my bandaged wrists on the edge of the polished mahogany. “Which means every time you took Victoria Hayes to the Four Seasons in Maui on the company card, you were spending my money. Every time you leased a Gulfstream to impress investors who laughed at you behind your back, you were spending my money. And when you authorized the transfer of two million dollars this morning to post your bail... you committed grand larceny against a company whose assets are currently under federal conservatorship.”
Julian spun toward Kane. “Marcus! Tell them! Tell them this is a civil breach! They can’t arrest me for drawing from my own operating account!”
Marcus Kane didn't look at him. He kept his eyes fixed firmly on the carpet. “Julian... I resigned as your counsel ten minutes ago. Providence Maritime has retained the firm of Gibson Dunn. NCIS and the Southern District of New York have already issued the revised warrants.”
“Warrants for what?!” Julian screamed, backing away toward the center of the room. “For what?!”
The door behind the federal marshals opened.
Two naval investigators in civilian suits entered, wheeling in a rolling audio-visual monitor. Behind them, escorted by two female federal corrections officers, was Victoria Hayes.
She looked nothing like the sun-kissed, cruel mistress who had laughed while dragging me through the Pacific. She was dressed in an orange federal jumpsuit. Her hands were cuffed to a belly chain, her ankles shackled. Her blonde hair was greasy, unwashed, and pulled into a messy knot. Her mascara was smeared down her cheeks, and her skin was pasty under the office lights.
Julian’s eyes widened in sheer, unadulterated panic. “Victoria... what did you do?”
Victoria looked at Julian. The adoration, the shared conspiratorial thrill that had passed between them at the edge of the infinity pool in Cabo, was gone. In its place was a visceral, incandescent hatred.
“You coward,” she spat, her voice shaking with rage. “You miserable, cowardly piece of garbage.”
“Don’t listen to her!” Julian yelled, turning wildly toward the federal marshals. “She’s deranged! She planned the whole thing! She was obsessed with me! She wanted Genevieve dead so she could take her place!”
“Play the recording, Agent Vance,” Arthur Montgomery said calmly.
The investigator tapped the tablet interface. A waveform appeared on the sixty-five-inch monitor.
The audio crackled, then filled the room with crisp, high-definition sound. It was an encrypted phone call, intercepted twenty-four hours before the retreat in Cabo by the Naval Cyber Warfare Development Group—a unit my father had commanded a decade prior.
*“Is the dosage right?”* Julian’s voice echoed through the boardroom, crystal-clear, smooth, devoid of emotion.
*“Two pills of Zolpidem crushed into the prenatal capsules, like you asked,”* Victoria’s recorded voice replied. *“Julian, are you sure about the tow line? If she flips at that speed, she’ll miscarry. She could drown before we get her back to the dock.”*
*“That’s the point, Vicki,”* Julian’s recorded voice replied, a soft, chilling chuckle following the words. *“Let the ocean do the work. If the baby doesn't survive, she’ll be too broken to fight the divorce settlement. And if she doesn't survive the trauma... the double-indemnity policy clears thirty days after the coroner signs the death certificate. We take the eight million, we pay off the Providence loan, and we move the primary office to Monaco. Just make sure you hit the throttle hard when you clear the breakwater. Make it look like she slipped.”*
Silence descended on the room like a heavy stone.
Julian’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly. The color in his skin went from pale to an ashen, sickly gray. His hands dropped to his sides.
“Victoria made a full proffer twenty minutes after we showed her the transfer logs,” Eleanor said, her voice dripping with venomous amusement. “She didn't realize that while you were promising her Monaco, you had already booked a single ticket to Zurich for yourself under a forged Canadian passport. You were going to leave her to take the fall for the murder the entire time, Julian.”
Victoria let out a bitter, choked sob from behind her shackles. “I gave up my career for you! I helped you falsify the freight manifests for the cartel shipments through San Pedro—I did everything you asked!”
“Shut up!” Julian shrieked, lunging toward Victoria.
Before he could take two steps, the two federal marshals moved with explosive speed. One caught Julian by the shoulder, driving him face-first into the thick carpet with a brutal, bone-jarring impact. The other marshal drove a knee into the small of his back, wrenching his arms behind him with a sharp, metallic *clack* of ratcheting steel handcuffs.
Julian screamed into the carpet, his nose bleeding against the deep-pile wool.
I stood up from the mahogany chair. The surgical incision in my abdomen burned with a dull, throbbing ache, but my spine was straight. I walked around the table, the heels of my designer shoes clicking rhythmically against the hardwood perimeter of the room.
I stopped six inches from Julian’s face, looking down at the man I had loved, the man I had protected, the man who had tried to drown our daughter for five million dollars.
“Genevieve...” he groaned into the floor, his cheek smeared with blood and carpet dust. “Please... have mercy. I made a mistake... I was desperate... the debts were crushing me...”
“You didn't make a mistake, Julian,” I said softly, crouching down so my eyes were level with his. “You made a transaction. And you miscalculated the cost.”
I reached down, taking the gold wedding band from my left ring finger. I held it between my thumb and forefinger for a single second, then let it drop.
The heavy ring bounced once against the bridge of his broken nose and rolled into the blood pooling on the carpet beside his ear.
“Take him away,” Admiral Montgomery ordered.
May you like
The marshals hauled Julian Vance to his feet like a sack of butchered meat and dragged him toward the elevator. His screams of panic and denial echoed down the elevator shaft long after the doors had slid shut.
***
