Chapter 6 - The Decoy
I stared at the empty metal lockbox on the table, feeling a cold panic rise in my chest.
“Where did he go?” I demanded, turning back to David.
David looked just as shocked as I was.
“There is no other exit from this secure room,” David stammered.
Marcus immediately walked over to the open lockbox and inspected the velvet interior.
“He didn't come here to drop off the ledger,” Marcus deduced quickly.
“He came here to retrieve something else.”
I walked over to the table and saw a small, torn piece of paper resting at the bottom of the box.
I picked it up carefully.
It was a faded receipt from an offshore storage facility located in the Cayman Islands.
“He is moving the money,” I realized aloud.
“He didn't just want the house, he wanted to access my grandparents' hidden offshore accounts.”
Marcus pulled out his tablet and rapidly typed in the account number from the receipt.
“Your grandfather had a massive emergency fund hidden away to protect the estate from taxes.”
“Your father must have found the access codes inside the ledger.”
“If he wires that money into a ghost account, we will never be able to trace it.”
“How much time do we have before the transfer clears?” I asked, my heart pounding.
“International transfers of this size take exactly one hour to authorize,” Marcus explained.
“We have forty-five minutes to stop him.”
I grabbed the receipt and ran out of the viewing room, leaving a confused David behind.
We rushed back into the black sedan, and Marcus slammed his foot on the gas pedal.
“Where would he go to authorize an international wire of that magnitude?” I asked.
“He cannot do it from a public network, it requires a secure, encrypted terminal.”
I thought about my father’s habits, his secret meetings, and his absolute arrogance.
“He went back to the house,” I said with sudden certainty.
“My grandfather's old study has a hardwired, encrypted fiber-optic line built directly into the floor.”
“He is using the house he just stole from me to steal the rest of my inheritance.”
Marcus nodded grimly and turned the car around, speeding back toward my neighborhood.
When we pulled onto my street, the large moving truck was still parked in the driveway.
But something was terribly wrong.
The two massive goons were lying unconscious on the front lawn.
The front door of my beautiful home was completely smashed open, hanging violently off its hinges.
I jumped out of the car before Marcus had even fully stopped the engine.
I ran up the steps and stepped cautiously into the ruined hallway.
The house had been completely ransacked.
Paintings were ripped from the walls, furniture was overturned, and the floorboards were torn up.
I heard a strange, muffled whimpering sound coming from the living room.
I walked slowly into the room, my hands shaking with fear.
My mother and sister were tied tightly to the dining chairs with heavy duct tape.
Their designer clothes were ruined, and they were both weeping uncontrollably.
I quickly ripped the tape off my mother's mouth.
“What happened here?” I demanded.
My mother gasped for air, her eyes wide with sheer terror.
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“It was your father,” she sobbed hysterically.
“He realized the ledger he stole from the safe was completely fake.”
