Chapter 17 - The Ledger on the Big Screen
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Adrian took a step forward to grab Julian Cross by the throat, his control snapping—until my voice rang out clearly from the mahogany podium on the center stage, carried across the entire ballroom by the high-definition sound system.
"Let them take their seats at Table Four, security," I called out smoothly into the microphone, smiling down from the stage as five hundred guests turned their heads toward me. "After all, Mr. Cross and Miss Reynolds paid two hundred thousand dollars to be here tonight, and they are actually the centerpiece of this evening’s presentation."
Down by the entrance, Julian Cross’s arrogant smirk flickered slightly as he glanced at his Patek Philippe watch: 8:29 PM. In sixty seconds, using the biometric credentials Sophia had cloned from Adrian’s overcoat at the St. Luke’s clinic on Monday, Cross’s six-man crew in the subterranean loading dock was scheduled to bypass the vault doors and transfer fifteen million dollars in unregistered casino bearer bonds and port deeds into an unmarked van.
Except the lights in the ballroom didn't flicker at 8:30.
Instead, the heavy bronze double doors at the rear of the ballroom swung shut and locked with an audible magnetic clank, while twelve uniformed FBI agents from the Chicago Financial Crimes and Port Corruption Task Force stepped out from the catering alcoves alongside Detective Lieutenant Miller of the Chicago Police Department.
"Before we begin the hospital auction," I announced to the hushed room, tapping a sleek remote control on the lectern, "as the new Chairwoman of Moretti Hospitality and Security, I promised my late grandmother-in-law, Eleanor Moretti, that I would always protect the integrity of our family’s name—and our vaults."
Behind me on the stage, the thirty-foot LED projection wall roared to life.
The left half of the giant screen showed a live, crystal-clear security feed from the subterranean loading dock beneath our feet—where Julian Cross’s six masked thieves were currently lying face-down on the concrete in steel handcuffs surrounded by Dante Vance’s tactical team, the cloned keycard transceiver sitting on an evidence bag beside them.
The right half of the giant screen lit up with the hidden-camera footage from Room 604 at the St. Luke’s clinic four days ago.
Every senator, judge, and billionaire in Chicago watched in stunned silence as Sophia Reynolds lay on a hospital bed with an unhooked IV tube taped to her arm, weeping fake tears at Adrian and accusing me of framing her—while thirty-six inches behind Adrian’s back, her paid accomplice slipped a hand into Adrian’s wet overcoat and cloned his master security pass for Julian Cross.
Then the screen switched to the Wabash Avenue diamond bourse surveillance video from May, showing Sophia smiling as she sold the priceless three-carat Colombian emerald pried out of Eleanor’s heirloom bracelet to pay the interest on her four-million-euro Monte Carlo gambling debt to Julian Cross.
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Across the Grand Crystal Ballroom, total pandemonium erupted as press cameras flashed like lightning around Table Four.
Down near the bar, Adrian stood frozen like a pillar of salt, staring up at the thirty-foot screen as he watched Sophia and her accomplice rob his coat pocket while he stood at her bedside defending her life. Every lie she had whispered in his ear over the past six months—every midnight phone call, every fake tear, every staged crisis designed to pull him out of my bed—played out in brutal, undeniable high definition in front of five hundred of his peers.
