Chapter 4 - The Decoy
I stared at the note in the empty briefcase, the bitter wind whipping against my face.
Eleanor had orchestrated this entire scenario.
She hadn't just walked out; she had laid a trap, using the very mistress who broke our marriage as a pawn in her deadly game.
I looked at Celeste, my grip tightening on her arm.
"Who paid you?" I demanded, my voice cutting through the roar of the jet engines.
"Eleanor paid me," Celeste confessed, her eyes finally showing a flicker of genuine fear.
"She approached me a month ago and offered me two million dollars to seduce you, fake a pregnancy, and push you into bringing me to the house."
The revelation was a physical blow to my chest.
Celeste wasn't pregnant. She wasn't working for the cartel.
She was an actress hired by my own wife to provide the perfect excuse for a sudden, dramatic exit.
"Where are the ledgers, Celeste?" I asked, my voice dangerously calm.
"I don't know," she swore, shaking her head.
"Eleanor gave me the brass key this morning and told me to empty the box and bring the briefcase to this plane."
"She said if I did exactly what she asked, you would follow me to Teterboro, and she would have enough time to finish her real objective."
My blood ran cold as I realized how brilliantly my wife had outmaneuvered me.
By drawing me to New Jersey, Eleanor had given herself unrestricted access to the one place I would never expect her to go.
The syndicate's primary money-laundering hub: The Moretti Foundation headquarters in Midtown Manhattan.
I shoved the briefcase back into Celeste's chest.
"Get on the plane and never return to New York," I ordered.
I sprinted back across the tarmac, dialing Victor on my secondary phone.
"Send a heavily armed team to the Foundation building right now," I commanded.
"Lock down the entire facility. Nobody goes in, nobody comes out."
"Boss, the Foundation building is already locked down," Victor replied, his voice laced with panic.
"Federal agents swarmed the building twenty minutes ago with a warrant."
The US Attorney's office had finally made their move.
"Did they find the hidden servers?" I asked, my heart hammering against my ribs.
"They didn't have to look for them, boss," Victor said grimly.
"Someone gave the feds the master decryption keys, and they are currently downloading a decade of our illicit financial records."
I ended the call, realizing I had vastly underestimated the depth of Eleanor's betrayal.
She wasn't just trying to cripple my legitimate businesses; she was trying to dismantle my entire criminal empire and send me to federal prison.
I needed to disappear before the FBI issued an arrest warrant.
I flagged down a private car service and directed the driver to a secure safe house located deep in the Bronx.
It was a windowless warehouse used to store untraceable cash for cartel payoffs.
When I arrived, the warehouse was dark and eerily quiet.
I unlocked the heavy steel door and stepped inside, reaching for my weapon.
The overhead lights suddenly flickered on, nearly blinding me.
Sitting at a metal table in the center of the warehouse was Arthur Vance, my chief financial officer.
He was bleeding heavily from a nasty cut above his eye, and his hands were zip-tied to the table.
Standing behind him, holding a suppressed pistol directly against Arthur's head, was Victor.
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"I'm sorry, boss," Victor said, his voice entirely devoid of remorse.
"But Mrs. Moretti made me a much better offer than you ever did."
