Chapter 5 - The Velvet Charity Trap
Adrian stared at the glowing satellite screen displaying his younger half-brother’s signature on the Zurich explosives wire, the muscle along his scarred jaw clenching so hard that the paramedic stepped back a pace in quiet fear.
For ten years after their father died, Adrian had protected Julian from his own reckless gambling debts and elevated him to Chief Operating Officer of the Bellmont Group, never suspecting that Julian’s resentment over being the second son had rotted into lethal treason.
Before Adrian’s security team could reach the federal building downtown, Marcus Vance received word from a contact inside Homeland Security that Julian had arrived fifteen minutes earlier with a team of high-priced defense attorneys and an emergency writ signed by a corrupt federal magistrate, posting a five-million-dollar cash bond that released Evan Hale and Paige Whitmore prior to formal arraignment after the dead customs supervisor’s body mysteriously vanished from the county morgue transit van.
Worse still, looking at the live banking clock on my decrypted micro-wafer, I saw that the forty-million-dollar slush fund Arthur Whitmore had looted from Hale Holdings’ pension and operating reserves was scheduled to clear the Detroit Maritime Clearinghouse Vault at eleven o’clock tonight during the annual Founders Charity Gala at the Fox Theatre Grand Ballroom.
Because the clearinghouse system had been set up in the nineties under a dual-signature corporate charter, stopping that forty-million-dollar wire before it vanished into Julian’s Cayman accounts forever required the physical titanium RSA rolling-code keyfob that Evan Hale wore on his platinum keychain—combined with my live retinal scan at the clearinghouse terminal located two floors beneath the ballroom.
When we arrived at Adrian’s heavily fortified glass-and-limestone penthouse overlooking Lake St. Clair at six o’clock that evening, I told Adrian that we had to walk straight into that gala tonight and take that keyfob off Evan’s body before the clearinghouse window closed at eleven.
Adrian looked at my dusty, smoke-stained charcoal dress, nodded once, and led me into the penthouse’s master dressing suite, where two tailors from Detroit’s most exclusive couturier were already waiting beside a garment rack holding a floor-length evening gown crafted from liquid crimson silk velvet.
I hesitated for a second as my fingers touched the gown, old insecurities whispered by Evan and Paige echoing in the back of my head about how women with my hips and full figure shouldn't wear bright crimson in a room full of size-zero society wives.
Adrian stepped behind me in front of the three-way mirror, his dark gray eyes meeting mine in the glass as he rested his large hands warmly on my hips and told me in a low, fierce murmur that if I ever hid my body in dark gray wool to make weak people comfortable again, he would personally burn every neutral dress in the state of Michigan.
At nine o’clock sharp, when the grand brass doors of the Fox Theatre Ballroom swung open under a blaze of crystal chandeliers and press cameras, five hundred of Detroit’s wealthiest executives froze mid-conversation as I walked down the red marble steps on Adrian Bellmont’s arm.
The crimson velvet gown hugged my waist and curves like a second skin, accented by a two-million-dollar pigeon-blood ruby and diamond collar Adrian had fastened around my throat ten minutes earlier, making me look less like a fired accountant and more like a reigning queen coming to collect a debt.
Across the champagne fountain near the VIP stage stood Evan Hale in a bespoke tuxedo alongside Paige, who was wearing another white designer gown as they desperately tried to convince a circle of nervous bankers that morning’s Homeland Security raid had been a minor clerical misunderstanding caused by their disgruntled ex-CFO.
Spotting us walking toward the central bar, Paige’s face twisted with venomous jealousy as she marched forward with a flute of champagne in her hand, laughing loudly enough to draw fifty pairs of eyes as she asked how much I had to pay Adrian to act as my escort for the night—before sneering that wrapping myself in red velvet only made me look like an overstuffed Christmas ornament.
Evan smirked behind her shoulder, thinking that out in public surrounded by polite society, Adrian wouldn't dare lay a finger on him.
Adrian did not raise his voice, and he did not reach for a weapon; instead, he lifted a slim remote control from his tuxedo pocket and tapped a single button that hijacked the thirty-foot LED charity backdrop screen behind the orchestra stage.
In front of all five hundred gasping society guests and six live local television cameras, the giant screen played the crystal-clear, high-definition boardroom video from ten o’clock that morning—showing Evan and Paige bragging about forging my signature on the Pier Nine customs manifest, mocking my body, and admitting that Arthur Whitmore had looted forty million dollars from Hale Holdings’ client accounts to finance their scheme.
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As the ballroom erupted into pandemonium and the Chairman of First Detroit Bank publicly shouted across the floor that all of Hale Holdings’ credit lines and Arthur Whitmore’s personal mortgages were revoked immediately, Evan’s knees buckled in total public ruin while a humiliated, shrieking Paige bolted through the velvet curtains toward the private executive suite at the back of the mezzanine.
Adrian and I strode straight past the flashing cameras and pushed open the heavy oak doors of the mezzanine suite ten seconds later to seize Evan’s RSA keyfob before he could flee down the fire escape—only to freeze on the threshold as we found Evan Hale collapsed in a widening pool of dark blood on the Persian rug with a silver letter opener buried to the hilt in his right shoulder, while through the open balcony doors, Julian Bellmont and Arthur Whitmore were dragging a screaming Paige into a waiting helicopter after ripping the titanium bank keyfob right off Evan’s bleeding chest.
