Chapter 6 - The Dinner Table Conspiracy
I didn't sit down. Instead, I dropped the heavy metal briefcase onto the sticky laminate table with a dull, echoing thud.
Victor Vance narrowed his eyes, his hand sliding down toward his jacket pocket where I knew a concealed weapon was resting.
"Keep your hands where I can see them, Victor," I said, my voice dropping into an icy register I didn't know I possessed.
Bernice let out a harsh, mocking laugh. "Oh, listen to little Christopher trying to play the tough guy. You brought the money?"
"Ten thousand dollars in certified cashier's checks as a down payment," I lied smoothly, echoing the script Savannah had fed into my ear via a tiny wireless earpiece. "The rest—the full million—comes when you hand over every single piece of leverage you have on my firm, my wife, and me. Originals only. No digital backups."
Victor leaned forward, eyeing the briefcase hungrily. He popped the latches. Inside sat neatly stacked bundles of dummy paper topped with actual hundred-dollar bills, and right in the center, the military-grade GPS tracker blinking a subtle, invisible green light.
"Looks light," Victor rasped, his voice like gravel grinding together.
"It’s a down payment," I snapped back, locking eyes with my mother. "Sign the release waiver relinquishing all future claims against my estate, my business, and Savannah, and you get the rest tomorrow morning."
Bernice stared at the briefcase, her greed completely blinding her common sense. She didn't care about the waiver; she just saw a golden goose she could milk indefinitely.
"Fine," Bernice hissed, pulling a pen from her purse. "Give me the pen. But hear this, Christopher: if you try to double-cross me, Richard goes to federal prison by noon tomorrow."
She scribbled her signature onto the paper I tossed onto the table—a document Savannah had secretly drafted to legally sign away any right to contest our assets or extort us further. It wouldn't hold up in a standard criminal court for blackmail, but it was legally binding enough to tie her up in civil court for decades.
Victor snapped the briefcase shut, grabbed it by the handle, and nodded at Bernice. "We're done here."
They stood up and rushed out the side exit toward a beat-up black sedan parked in the alley.
I waited two minutes, walked out the front door, and slipped back into our SUV.
"They took it?" Savannah asked, her eyes glued to the tracking map on her laptop screen.
"Hook, line, and sinker," I said, buckling my seatbelt. "Where are they heading?"
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Savannah zoomed out on the digital map. A red pulsing dot was moving rapidly down Interstate 5, heading toward an abandoned industrial warehouse district near the docks.
"Not a stash house," Savannah whispered, her face pale in the screen's glow. "That's an old shipping depot owned by Victor Vance's shell company. And according to my network sweep... they aren't alone."
