Chapter 5 - The Fall of the First Four
By noon, the hunt had begun.
While Clara slept under the supervision of Dr. Lin, I retreated to my command room on the lower level of the estate. Across forty wall-mounted monitors, real-time data streams illuminated the sudden, frantic movements of the Sterling family.
They had scattered exactly as wolves do when the shepherd appears with a rifle.
“Status report,” I said, taking a seat at the central terminal.
My chief financial intelligence officer, Victoria Cole, stepped forward with a remote tablet.
“Thomas Sterling—the one whose knee Keller dislocated—is currently holed up at a private orthopedic clinic in northern Jersey, guarded by four private bodyguards,” Victoria reported. “Lucas and Eli fled toward the family compound in the Catskills. Garrett is in his legislative office in Albany, trying to draft an emergency restraining order and destroy paper trails connecting his campaign to the Newark dock kickbacks.”
“And Damian?”
“Damian is at the family’s logistics headquarters in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He has three shredding trucks outside and is attempting to wire forty-two million dollars out of their offshore holding company into a numbered account in Zurich.”
I looked at the screens. “Execute Phase One.”
Phase One was not a siege of bullets; it was the total erasure of their financial existence.
At 12:15 p.m., Damian Sterling stood in his penthouse office overlooking the container cranes of Newark, watching the progress bar on his computer monitor hit 98%. Forty-two million dollars—the final reserves of the Sterling empire. Once that money landed in Switzerland, he could buy a private flight to a non-extradition country, leave his brothers behind, and reinvent himself.
At 99%, the screen flashed crimson.
**TRANSACTION REJECTED: ASSETS FROZEN PURSUANT TO EXECUTIVE ORDER 13224.**
Damian slammed his fists onto the mahogany desk. “No! No! Work, you piece of garbage!”
The heavy double doors of his office swung open. It wasn't his secretary.
It was eight federal agents wearing Department of the Treasury and Homeland Security windbreakers, followed by three postal inspectors and a United States Attorney.
“Damian Sterling?” the lead agent asked, producing a thick sheaf of paper. “I have a federal warrant for your arrest on seventy-eight counts of wire fraud, maritime smuggling, racketeering, and conspiracy to commit murder.”
“This is an outrage!” Damian roared, reaching for the phone. “My brother is a state representative! You can’t enter this building!”
“Your brother Garrett was arrested twenty minutes ago on the steps of the state capitol,” the agent said coldly, snapping a pair of heavy steel cuffs around Damian’s wrists. “Turns out his campaign PAC was laundering profits from an unregistered narcotics pipeline run out of your dry-dock facilities. We also found the security footage your father tried to erase from the estate last night.”
Damian’s knees buckled. “What footage?”
“The footage of you holding Clara Cross by the hair while Thomas kicked her in the ribs,” the agent whispered in Damian’s ear as he hauled him toward the door. “Every single juryman in this district is going to watch you commit infanticide on forty-foot screens, Damian. You’re never seeing the sun again.”
Simultaneously, forty miles north at the private clinic, Thomas Sterling was lying in a hospital bed with his shattered knee in a traction cast, sweating profusely.
The door opened. Thomas breathed a sigh of relief, expecting his private physician.
Instead, Keller walked in.
Keller wasn't wearing a uniform. He wore a simple black suit. He pulled up a plastic chair, dragged it to the foot of Thomas’s bed, sat down, and placed a manila folder on Thomas’s lap.
“What is this?” Thomas stammered, frantically looking toward the door for his bodyguards.
“Your security team took fifty thousand dollars each to take a four-hour lunch,” Keller explained calmly. “Open the folder, Thomas.”
Trembling, Thomas flipped open the cover. Inside were thirty high-resolution photographs of offshore bank accounts, secret real estate deeds, and signed affidavits from six loan sharks Thomas had used to finance his illegal gambling debts across Atlantic City.
“You owe four million dollars to the Castellano family,” Keller said. “Your father used to guarantee those debts with his political clout. But Arthur doesn't have clout anymore. In fact, thirty minutes ago, Mr. Cross bought your debt notes from the Castellanos for ten cents on the dollar.”
Thomas’s throat dried out. “Adrian owns my debt?”
“Adrian owns *you*,” Keller corrected. “And since default on these specific private contracts triggers immediate forfeiture of all personal collateral, your penthouse in Manhattan, your yacht in Montauk, and your luxury sports cars have just been seized. You are completely bankrupt.”
Keller stood up, leaning over the bed until his face was inches from Thomas’s sweating forehead.
“The federal marshals are downstairs. They’re coming up to charge you with aggravated battery resulting in the death of an unborn child. You’re going to spend the next thirty years in a state penitentiary where your knee will never be fixed properly. You will limp for the rest of your miserable life, Thomas. And every step you take will remind you of the niece or nephew you killed.”
Keller turned and walked out, leaving Thomas sobbing alone in the room as the siren wails of approaching federal cruisers echoed through the open window.
In Albany, Garrett Sterling was paraded out of his legislative office in front of fifty flashing news cameras. The press had been leaked every email, every kickback spreadsheet, and every recorded phone call proving his complicity in Clara’s assault. By 1:00 p.m., the governor held an emergency press conference stripping Garrett of his committee assignments and calling for his immediate expulsion.
The younger brothers, Lucas and Eli, never made it to the Catskills.
Their black Range Rover was boxed in on Interstate 87 by four unmarked tactical Suburbans. State police, working under federal orders, pulled them from the vehicle at gunpoint, face-down onto the freezing asphalt. In the trunk, troopers found two unregistered automatic weapons and four million dollars in cash—evidence Julian had desperately instructed them to hide.
Four brothers down. Four to go.
May you like
And Arthur Sterling was running out of shadows.
***
