Chapter 6 - The Corruption
My mother's digital smile sent a terrifying chill straight down my spine.
"Did you really think your father was smart enough to run a criminal syndicate on his own?" she asked mockingly.
She looked perfectly immaculate, wearing a pristine white coat and sitting in the back of a luxury vehicle.
I demanded to know where Chloe was and what she had done with my father.
My mother laughed, a cold and hollow sound that echoed through the empty basement.
"Your father outlived his usefulness the moment the police saw that security footage," she explained calmly.
She revealed that she was the actual mastermind behind the entire money-laundering operation.
When the police arrested her at the hospital, she simply called her cartel associates to stage the ambush and free her.
She had intercepted my father at the meatpacking plant just ten minutes before we arrived.
She took Chloe as her own hostage and left my father bound and gagged in the trunk of a car.
"I want the two million dollars transferred to my personal offshore account within twenty minutes," she demanded.
If I refused, she promised to execute Chloe and send me the video of it happening.
Sarah grabbed the phone from my hand and glared intensely at the woman who had ruined our lives.
"You are going to burn in hell for what you did to us," Sarah hissed through her teeth.
My mother's smile instantly vanished, replaced by a look of pure, unadulterated hatred when she recognized Sarah.
"I should have made sure you were dead five years ago," my mother spat before ending the call abruptly.
Rebecca immediately connected the cell phone to her laptop to trace the digital signal of the call.
The trace pinged a location less than three miles away at the city's private luxury airfield.
My mother was planning to board a private jet and flee the country the moment she received the money.
We sprinted back to the black sedan and sped toward the heavily guarded airfield on the outskirts of town.
We parked near the perimeter fence and used bolt cutters to quietly slice through the chain-link mesh.
We snuck onto the tarmac, hiding behind massive fuel trucks as we approached a sleek Gulfstream jet.
My mother was standing near the boarding stairs, flanked by four heavily armed cartel guards.
Chloe was kneeling on the concrete tarmac, sobbing quietly with her hands zip-tied behind her back.
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I pulled out my phone and accessed the banking app, preparing to transfer the money to save my friend.
Just as I hit the final confirmation button, a fleet of black tactical vans crashed through the airport gates.
