Chapter 13 - The Ghost War
Panic hit Grace like a physical wave. She snatched her encrypted satellite phone and dialed her chief financial officer in Zurich.
"Verify the Miller Trust accounts immediately!" she demanded, her voice losing its icy composure for the first time.
"Miss Miller... we have a catastrophic error," the banker replied, his voice trembling through the speaker. "Three minutes ago, someone executed a cold-storage vault drain using a physical master key from inside a private vault in Liechtenstein. Over four hundred million dollars in liquid crypto and bullion has been routed into a dead-drop black account."
"Block it!" she screamed.
"We can't," the banker stuttered. "The override code used was registered under the original Miller Syndicate charter from 2006. It wasn't Dominic Moretti who authorized it, Miss Miller... it was your father's old partner."
Grace dropped the phone, her mind spinning into hyperdrive.
Meanwhile, four floors beneath the Brooklyn Navy Yard, inside a concrete bunker lit only by flickering fluorescent tubes, I stood in front of a giant tactical board. Maps of Grace's supply routes, her shell companies, and her hidden safehouses were pinned to the wall, connected by red strings.
Nico dropped a heavy tactical duffel bag onto the metal table, unzipping it to reveal an array of military-grade firearms, thermite charges, and encrypted comms equipment.
"She’s hired every mercenary company between Miami and Montreal," Nico said, racking the bolt of an assault rifle. "She knows you're alive now."
"She knows I'm breathing," I corrected, loading silver hollow-point rounds into a magazine. "She doesn't know where the strike is coming from. Grace built her entire plan on revenge against me. She never bothered to look into who was whispering in her ear ten years ago."
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"What do you mean?" Nico asked, frowning.
I pulled an old, yellowed file folder from my coat and tossed it onto the table. "My cousin Anthony didn't drive Vincent Miller to jump off that bridge, Nico. Neither did I. Vincent was murdered by his own brother—Silas Miller."
