Chapter 3 - THE TRAP IS SET"Can you stand?" I asked, snapping the heavy steel chain around Wyatt's ankle with a single, practiced squeeze of the bolt cutters.
Wyatt gasped as the iron fell away, but the moment he tried to put weight on his right leg, a sickening crunch echoed in the basement. His face drained of what little color it had left. The knee was completely shattered—likely smashed with a sledgehammer or an iron pipe.
"My leg... I can't," Wyatt groaned, biting his lip until it bled to keep from screaming.
"You don't need to walk out of here," I said, sliding my arms beneath him and lifting him with the quiet strength of a man who had loaded thousands of freight crates by hand. "We are going to play their game, but on our terms."
I carried him to the dark corner behind the boiler room, where an old emergency cot still sat from when I had renovated the house years ago. I covered him with a thermal blanket, handed him a bottle of clean water, and checked my watch.
11:15 PM.
Forty-five minutes until midnight. Forty-five minutes until Sabrina and Irving planned to execute their grand theft and murder plot.
Upstairs, the bass from the party speakers thudded through the floorboards. Laughter, clinking glasses, and festive chatter drifted down. They thought they had won. They thought Wyatt was a helpless animal trapped in a cage.
They had no idea that the master key to Heartland Freight Systems—and every single bank account, asset, and legal title attached to it—was resting safely in my pocket.
My phone buzzed silently. A text message from an unknown number flashed on the screen:
“Everything is in position. The federal marshals are five minutes out. Shall we move in now, Chairman Yates?”
A grim smile touched my lips. I typed back a single word:
“Not yet. Let them pop the champagne first.”
I didn't build a logistics empire by rushing a delivery. You wait until all the cargo is loaded, the seals are locked, and the trap is completely shut.
I wiped the sweat from my brow, pulled a small black electronic device from my pocket—a master signal jammer I used for high-security corporate acquisitions—and plugged it into the basement’s main electrical grid.
May you like
Instantly, every cell phone, Wi-Fi router, and smart device in the entire house went pitch black. No signal in. No signal out.
The party upstairs suddenly went dead silent.
