The night I brought my pregnant mistress into our Manhattan mansion, I expected my wife to scream.

Panic rippled through the cartel mercenaries as the massive floodlights from the Interpol helicopters cut through the smoke in the corridor.

They weren't paid enough to fight a European federal strike force.

Two of the operators immediately dropped their rifles and raised their hands. The others began backing away, looking for an escape route that didn't exist.

Arthur Vance was completely unglued.

His immaculate composure shattered as he looked at the helicopters, then back at me.

"You called them," Arthur hissed, his hand trembling as he kept his pistol aimed at my head. "You destroyed my empire before I even built it!"

"You never had an empire, Arthur," I said coldly. "You were just a parasite feeding off mine."

"I still have the gun!" Arthur screamed, stepping closer to me. "I can still kill you!"

"If you shoot me, the snipers in those choppers will cut you in half before my body hits the floor," I pointed out calmly.

Arthur looked out the shattered window, seeing the red laser dots dancing across the chests of his mercenaries. He realized I was right. He was trapped.

But Arthur Vance was a creature of pure greed. Even in the face of absolute defeat, he couldn't let go of the prize.

"The ledgers," Arthur demanded frantically, lowering his gun slightly. "Give me the physical ledgers. If I have them, I can negotiate a plea deal with the US Attorney. I can trade the cartel's secrets for immunity!"

He was pathetic. A rat looking for the final scrap of cheese on a sinking ship.

I slowly reached into my jacket and pulled out a small, encrypted USB drive.

"The physical ledgers are useless to you, Arthur," I said, holding the drive up in the harsh light. "Eleanor digitized the entire financial network on the plane. Every routing number, every offshore account, every cartel bribe is on this drive."

Arthur stared at the piece of plastic like it was the Holy Grail.

"Give it to me," he demanded, holstering his weapon and taking a step forward.

I tossed the drive onto the blood-stained floor between us.

Arthur scrambled forward, dropping to his knees to grab the drive. He pulled a slim laptop from his tactical briefcase, furiously plugging the USB into the port.

"You think this saves you?" Arthur laughed maniacally as the decryption screen popped up. "I'll upload this directly to a secure server. I'll own the cartel's data before Interpol even breaches the doors!"

He hit the enter key.

The screen flashed bright red.

Arthur's smile vanished.

"What is this?" he whispered, staring at the rapidly scrolling code on the screen.

"It's a digital trap," Eleanor's weak, exhausted voice echoed from the barricaded room behind me.

Arthur looked up in sheer horror.

"I designed that drive to look like a master ledger," Eleanor explained, leaning heavily against the doorframe, supported by Victor. "But it's actually a hostile zero-day exploit. The moment you plugged it in, it bypassed your firewalls and accessed your personal offshore accounts."

Arthur stared at the screen as the numbers rapidly ticked down to zero.