Chapter 6 - Shadows in the Hamptons
The wind off the Atlantic Ocean whipped across the sprawling lawns of the Hamptons estate, but inside the glass-walled sunroom, the temperature was warm and quiet. Serena Vance paced frantically across the imported Italian marble floor, her phone pressed tightly to her ear for the fourth time in ten minutes.
"Pick up, damn it," she muttered under her breath, her manicured nails tapping nervously against the screen.
The offshore accounts Victor had promised her—the hidden reserves meant to fund her escape to the Cayman Islands—had all vanished overnight. Every single credit card in her wallet had been declined at the Prada boutique in East Hampton an hour ago. When she checked her mobile banking app, her balance read zero, replaced by a polite digital notice from Cross Atlantic Financial Compliance indicating that her assets had been frozen under suspicion of conspiracy and money laundering.
A soft knock echoed at the double glass doors leading to the terrace.
Serena jumped, spinning around. "Who's there?" she called out, her voice trembling. "If this is the press, I have lawyers—"
The glass door slid open silently. A towering man in a dark tailored suit stepped into the room, bringing a gust of cold autumn air with him. It wasn't a journalist. It was Marcus, my father’s head of security, flanked by two federal asset-recovery officers.
"Miss Vance," Marcus said, his voice flat and professional. "You are cordially invited to accompany us downtown."
"On what grounds?" Serena shrieked, backing away until her spine hit the edge of a mahogany console table. "I haven't committed any crimes! Victor did everything! I was just... I was just along for the ride!"
Marcus pulled a thick sheaf of legal documents from his jacket and tossed them onto the table in front of her. "According to the federal indictment unsealed twenty minutes ago, you weren't just along for the ride, Miss Vance. You helped Victor select the specific life insurance rider six months before the incident, and your personal laptop contains search histories for lethal hypothermia rates in high-altitude environments."
Serena’s face drained of all color. Her knees buckled, and she grabbed the edge of the table to steady herself. "That’s... that’s impossible. I cleared my browser history."
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"Not on a server backed up by Cross Atlantic cloud architecture," Marcus replied with a chillingly polite smile. "My employer owns the digital infrastructure of half the corporate networks in this country, Miss Vance. Did you really think an amateur like Victor Hale knew how to wipe a hard drive?"
As the federal officers stepped forward and clicked the cold steel cuffs around her wrists, Serena let out a piercing, hysterical sob that echoed uselessly against the empty luxury of the seaside mansion.
