Chapter 6 - The Fall of Vanessa Reyes
Vanessa Reyes did not wait for the handcuffs to click around Damien’s wrists.
While Theo shoved Damien to the floor and the federal marshals moved into the boardroom, Vanessa slipped through the secondary service entrance behind the coffee bar. Her heels clicked frantically against the marble of the back corridor as she sprinted toward the private executive express elevator.
She slammed her palm against the call button, her breath coming in ragged, suffocating gasps.
Run, her mind screamed. Get to the airport. Get out of the country.
She had spent three years preparing for the possibility of a corporate disaster. In a high-security safe deposit box at a private vault facility near O’Hare International Airport, she had stashed twelve million dollars in untraceable bearer bonds, a counterfeit Spanish passport under the name Elena Morales, and two hardware crypto wallets holding four million dollars in cold-storage assets.
The elevator doors chimed open. She dove inside, hitting the button for the underground parking garage.
Forty minutes later, Vanessa was behind the wheel of a black, rented Audi sedan, speeding down the Kennedy Expressway toward the private aviation terminal at O’Hare.
The gray autumn rain was falling in torrential sheets, blurring the taillights of the morning commuter traffic. Her hands shook so violently on the leather steering wheel that she nearly swerved into a concrete barrier twice.
“Stupid, arrogant, pathetic coward,” she hissed aloud, slamming her palm against the steering wheel as tears of rage streaked her makeup. “I told him not to hit her! I told him to wait until the papers were signed!”
She pulled up to the gated entrance of the private charter terminal on the southwest perimeter of the airfield.
A sleek, twin-engine Gulfstream G450 sat idling on the tarmac, its engines whining with a low, powerful hum, its tail painted in neutral gray. She had booked the flight two hours ago using a prepaid corporate credit card registered to an offshore shell, filing a flight manifest for San Jose, Costa Rica.
Vanessa grabbed her leather travel bag, containing the bearer bonds and the passport, and threw open the car door.
She ran through the rain toward the boarding stairs, shielding her head with her designer handbag. The jet’s forward cabin door was open; the flight attendant stood in the doorway, waiting.
“Clear for departure?” Vanessa shouted over the whine of the jet engines, her drenched clothes clinging to her skin.
“Almost, Ms. Reyes,” a calm, deep voice replied from the top of the boarding stairs.
Vanessa froze on the fourth step of the metal ladder.
A man stepped out of the private jet’s luxury cabin onto the boarding platform.
It wasn't the charter pilot.
It was Malik Voss.
He wore a dark navy trench coat over his charcoal suit, holding an umbrella in one hand and a steaming paper cup of coffee in the other. He looked completely dry, completely relaxed, looking down at her with an expression of cool, clinical pity.
“What... what are you doing here?” Vanessa gasped, her voice failing her, her knees trembling on the wet metal grating.
Theo stepped out from behind the airport maintenance hangar, flanked by six armed officers from the Chicago Police Department’s tactical unit and two federal agents in windbreakers blazoned with FBI.
“You booked a charter through SkyLine Aviation, Vanessa,” Theo said, strolling up to the base of the stairs, twirling his tablet with a smirk. “SkyLine Aviation is a wholly owned subsidiary of Voss Aerospace. Did you really think you could book a private jet in the Midwest without my network flagging your IP within six milliseconds?”
Vanessa dropped her leather bag.
It hit the wet tarmac with a heavy, wet thud, bursting open to reveal the stacks of bearer bonds and the fake Spanish passport spilling out across the asphalt into puddles of dirty rainwater.
“No... please,” Vanessa whimpered, sinking down onto the cold metal steps, burying her face in her trembling hands. “Malik, please. I’ll cooperate. I’ll tell you everything. I have every email, every encrypted text message, every voice recording of Damien telling me how to source the digitalis from Montreal! He signed the authorization orders! He wanted her dead! He wanted the baby dead!”
Malik slowly walked down the metal stairs, his umbrella shielding her from the freezing downpour.
He looked down at the woman who had smiled in his sister’s face while plotting her murder.
“We don't need your testimony to convict him, Vanessa,” Malik whispered softly. “We already have the digital forensics, the bank records, and the chemist in custody. Your cooperation won't save you from a twenty-year sentence for conspiracy to commit capital murder.”
Special Agent Miller stepped forward, pulling Vanessa’s arms behind her back, the cold steel handcuffs ratcheting tight around her wrists.
“Vanessa Reyes,” Agent Miller said, reading from a laminated card. “You are under arrest for conspiracy to commit premeditated murder, federal wire fraud, interstate transportation of stolen securities, and grand larceny.”
As they dragged her through the rain toward the waiting police cruiser, Vanessa looked back at Theo and Malik.
The two brothers stood shoulder-to-shoulder on the tarmac, immovable, unyielding, their faces carved from the same unbreakable stone that had built an empire.
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The illusion was over.
The trap had snapped shut, and there was no sky left for her to run to.
