Chapter 6 - The Mastermind
The air in my lawyer’s office suddenly felt incredibly heavy and impossible to breathe.
I stared at Marcus, praying that his terrified, tear-stained face was just pulling a desperate bluff.
I demanded that he repeat what he had just said slowly and clearly for the recording device.
Marcus wiped his trembling hands on his jeans and leaned closer to the microphone on the table.
He confessed that Arthur had discovered his own sterility five years ago, long before his mother found the medical records.
Arthur had always known the twins were not his, but he desperately needed a chaotic distraction.
He used Brooke’s affair with Julian as the perfect smokescreen to hide his true, horrifying objective.
Arthur had secretly accumulated massive gambling debts with a violent syndicate operating out of the city.
He embezzled the eight hundred thousand dollars not to buy Brooke a luxury apartment, but to pay a down payment on a hitman.
The five million dollar life insurance policy was supposed to pay off the rest of his dangerous debts.
My lawyer, sitting across the table, turned pale and immediately reached for his desk phone to call the authorities.
I placed my hand over the receiver, stopping him from making the call.
If we brought the police in now, Arthur would panic and the cartel might accelerate their timeline.
I needed to outsmart Arthur at his own deadly game without triggering the trap he had set for me.
I looked back at Marcus and asked him exactly when the hit was scheduled to take place.
Marcus swallowed hard, his eyes darting nervously toward the large glass windows of the office.
He whispered that the cartel never gave a specific date, only a specific location.
They were supposed to ambush me at the annual charity gala my company hosted every single year.
The gala was scheduled for tomorrow night at the grand downtown hotel.
I felt a cold bead of sweat roll down my spine as the reality of my impending assassination set in.
Arthur had planned to play the grieving, devastated husband perfectly in front of hundreds of high-profile witnesses.
I dismissed Marcus, warning him to disappear from the city if he wanted to live to see another week.
My lawyer practically begged me to cancel the gala and hide in a secure bunker until the FBI handled it.
I refused to run and hide while my treacherous husband tried to steal everything I had built with my own hands.
I told my lawyer to draft the final corporate takeover documents and bring them to the gala.
I was going to give Arthur exactly what he wanted by showing up to the event wearing my finest evening gown.
I spent the rest of the day coordinating quietly with a private tactical security firm recommended by my legal team.
As I stepped into my sleek black dress the next evening, my phone buzzed with an incoming text message.
May you like
It was from an unknown number, and it contained a live surveillance photo of me standing in my own bedroom.
The message below the photo read, "You look beautiful tonight, widow."
