Chapter 6 - The Ghost in the MachineSophia stared at the giant monitor, her mind spinning into a freefall. The man on the screen was James—smiling, wearing his old gray sweater, holding a coffee mug in the offices of Atlantic Meridian.
"Why do you have pictures of my husband?" Sophia whispered, her voice cracking with a mixture of terror and fierce protectiveness. "What is this room?"
Dominic stepped back into the doorway, blocking her exit not with hostility, but with an immovable presence. He reached out and tapped a key on the console, minimizing the financial ledgers to reveal a complex web of interconnected corporate names, bank accounts, and encrypted chat logs.
"This room," Dominic said quietly, "is where I find things that people try very hard to hide from me. And for the last two years, I’ve been trying to find out who killed James Bennett."
Sophia’s knees buckled. She caught the edge of a mahogany table to steady herself. "The police said it was an accident. Rain-slick road. A tragic accident."
"The police in White Plains answer to men who fill their retirement accounts with dirty money," Dominic replied without a trace of emotion. "James wasn't killed by a wet road, Sophia. His brakes were deliberately severed by a hydraulic clamp. Someone wanted his mouth permanently shut."
Tears spilled over Sophia’s eyelashes, hot and fast. The grief she thought she had buried two years ago ripped open like a fresh wound. "Why? What did James do? He was just an accountant—he balanced spreadsheets, he worried about utility bills, he wouldn't hurt a fly!"
"He didn't hurt anyone," Dominic said, stepping closer to her. His dark eyes held hers with an intensity that made it difficult to breathe. "He did something much more dangerous. He caught onto a multi-million-dollar embezzlement scheme running through Atlantic Meridian. And worse... he copied the master ledger onto a secure flash drive and mailed it to himself before they caught him."
Sophia gasped. "A flash drive? James never mentioned—"
"Because he knew they were watching him," Dominic interrupted. "He knew if he gave it to the authorities, it would end up on the desk of a corrupt DA within an hour. So he hid it somewhere safe. Somewhere no one would ever think to look."
Sophia stared at him, the pieces of the nightmare finally clicking together. "That’s why our apartment was tossed three days after the funeral. That’s why men in suits followed me to the grocery store. They were looking for the flash drive."
"And they are still looking for it," Dominic said grimly. "Which is why you and Emma are in mortal danger right now. Salvatore Romano’s men aren't just angry about the wedding cancellation. They know that whoever has James Bennett’s flash drive holds the keys to the entire New York underworld."
Before Sophia could process the staggering weight of his words, a piercing, high-pitched alarm began to wail through the mansion.
Red emergency strobe lights flashed along the third-floor corridor.
Marcus Vance’s voice echoed urgently through the intercom system: "Boss! Perimeter breach at the west gate! Heavily armed mercs—they’re bypassing the security grid! They’re coming in!"
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Dominic’s expression turned into that of a cold-blooded predator. He grabbed Sophia by the arm, pulling her out of the server room.
"Stay behind me," Dominic ordered, his hand slipping inside his jacket to pull out a heavy Glock pistol with terrifying familiarity. "We’re going to get Emma."
