He neutralized one man, breaking his arm with a sickening snap, but the second man struck him hard in the back of the head with the butt of a rifle.
Alex crumpled to the marble floor, unconscious.
“No,” I whispered, pressing my hands against the screen.
The armed men grabbed Alex by the arms, dragging his limp body out the shattered front doors and into the rainy night.
“They took him,” I sobbed, turning to Rachel and Nicole.
Nicole gritted her teeth as Rachel tightened a bandage around her shoulder. She looked at me, her eyes filled with a fierce, terrifying determination.
“They didn’t just take him, Rebecca,” Nicole said, her voice strained but steady. “Silas Thorne doesn’t take prisoners unless he needs leverage.”
“Leverage for what?” I asked.
Nicole pointed to the heavy, cream-colored document I was still clutching in my trembling hand. The postnuptial agreement.
“Silas knows Arthur Hayes is alive,” Nicole reasoned, her mind working furiously despite the pain. “He knows Arthur wants you to sign away the baby and the legitimate businesses. Silas wants to force Alex to transfer those businesses to him instead.”
“And if he doesn’t?” I asked, dread pooling in my stomach.
“Then Silas kills Alex, and hunts us down to finish the job,” Nicole stated bluntly.
I looked down at the document in my hand. Arthur’s signature mocked me from the bottom of the page. The father who had faked his death to manipulate his son’s life from the shadows.
“Rachel,” I said, a dangerous, reckless idea forming in my mind. “Does this panic room have an external communication line?”
“Yes,” Rachel said, pointing to a secure landline phone on the wall. “It’s hardwired to bypass local cell towers. Untraceable.”
“Who are you going to call?” Nicole asked, alarmed. “The police are on Silas’s payroll, Rebecca. You can’t trust them.”
“I’m not calling the police,” I said, picking up the heavy receiver. “I’m calling a ghost.”
I looked at the document, finding the small, printed Swiss phone number listed under Arthur Hayes’s legal representation.
I dialed the number.
It rang twice.
“Speak,” a cold, heavily accented voice answered.
“Hello, Arthur,” I said, my voice trembling but loud in the quiet panic room. “This is your daughter-in-law.”
Chapter 5 – The Devil’s Bargain
The silence on the other end of the line was heavy, calculating. I could almost hear the gears turning in the mind of the man who had orchestrated my husband’s misery for five years.
“Rebecca,” Arthur finally said, his voice surprisingly smooth, devoid of the shock I expected. “I was told you were stubborn. I see my son wasn’t exaggerating.”
“Your son is currently being dragged into a van by Silas Thorne’s men,” I stated, refusing to let him control the conversation. “They breached the mansion. Madison is dead on my kitchen floor.”
There was a sharp intake of breath on the line.
“Madison is dead?” Arthur repeated. The coldness cracked for a fraction of a second. “And Silas has Alex?”
“Yes,” I said, gripping the phone tighter. “Silas used your little arranged marriage plot as a Trojan horse. He doesn’t want peace, Arthur. He wants the empire. And he’s going to torture your son until he signs over the shipping ports.”
“Alex won’t break,” Arthur said confidently.
“He will if Silas threatens me and the baby,” I countered, the truth of it hitting me hard. Alex had been willing to destroy our marriage, to look like a monster in my eyes, just to ensure I was safe in Michigan when the war started. He would absolutely surrender the empire to save us.
Arthur remained silent for a long moment. “Why are you calling me, Rebecca? You have the document. Sign it. Leave the city. Save yourself.”
“If I sign it, you get the baby,” I reminded him fiercely. “I will burn this entire city to the ground before I hand my daughter over to a man who faked his own death to avoid federal prison.”
“Then what do you want?” Arthur demanded, his patience waning.
“I want my husband back,” I said. “And I want you to help me get him.”
Arthur let out a dry, rasping laugh. “You want my help? My dear, I am sitting in a highly secure chalet in Geneva. I have no men in Chicago right now. The loyalists I had left were commanded by Alex.”
“You have money, Arthur,” I reasoned, pacing the small panic room. “And you have the original, encrypted ledgers of the Chicago Syndicate. The ones you stole from Silas Thorne fifteen years ago to secure your dominance.”
The line went dead silent.
“Alex told me,” I lied flawlessly. I had no idea if such ledgers existed, but if Silas wanted the shipping ports so badly, there had to be a reason Arthur had maintained power from the shadows for so long. It was always about leverage.
“You are playing a very dangerous game, little girl,” Arthur warned, his voice dropping into a lethal register.
“I’m playing the only game I have,” I fired back. “If Silas kills Alex, he takes the ports. He takes your legitimate cover. You lose your income stream, Arthur. You’ll be a fugitive with no resources.”
I took a deep breath, resting my hand on my kicking stomach.
“Send the encrypted ledgers to my email,” I demanded. “Give me the leverage to negotiate with Silas. I will trade the ledgers for Alex’s life.”
“If I give you those ledgers, you have the power to destroy me as well,” Arthur pointed out astutely.
“I don’t care about you, Arthur,” I said honestly. “I care about the father of my child. Send the files. Or I walk out of this panic room and hand the postnuptial agreement directly to Silas. He’ll forge my signature, take the ports, and you’ll have nothing.”
It was a massive bluff. But Arthur didn’t know I was trapped in a room with a bleeding sister-in-law and a housekeeper.
“Check your inbox in five minutes,” Arthur said coldly. “If you survive the night, Rebecca, we will have a very long conversation about respect.”
He hung up.
I slammed the receiver down, my entire body shaking with adrenaline.
“You just blackmailed the dead king of Chicago,” Nicole breathed from the cot, staring at me in awe.
“I need a laptop,” I said, turning to Rachel.
Rachel didn’t hesitate. She opened a steel cabinet on the wall and pulled out a rugged, secure laptop, booting it up.
Five minutes later, an encrypted email arrived in the secure inbox Alex had set up for emergency communications. I downloaded the files to a small, silver flash drive hanging on Rachel’s keychain.
“Okay,” I said, clutching the flash drive tightly. “We have the leverage. Now we need to find out where they took him.”
“Silas owns the old meatpacking plant on the South Side,” Nicole said, wincing as she shifted her injured shoulder. “It’s his primary stronghold. It’s a fortress, Rebecca. You can’t just walk in there.”
