Chapter 6 - The Unlikely Ally
Lauren slammed the back door so hard the glass pane rattled in its frame. Within seconds, I heard the engine of her SUV roar to life and recede down the driveway.
I was alone in the quiet, empty house. The home I had spent years convincing myself was safe and stable was nothing more than a fragile shell hiding a lifetime of wreckage.
My phone buzzed again on the counter.
Expecting another threat, I picked it up with a sinking stomach. But the screen displayed an incoming call from an unknown, local number.
I swiped to answer, my voice tight. "Hello?"
"If you want to see your family again without a SWAT team kicking in your front door, don't hang up," a smooth, calm male voice said on the other end.
My heart hammered against my ribs. "Who is this? Are you with Chloe?"
"Chloe is just a footnote," the voice replied. "My name is Andrew."
The silence in the kitchen became absolute. The man my wife had been seeing—the man whose hand I had seen her holding in that café downtown—was now calling me on my cell phone while my family was fleeing for their safety.
"You," I snarled, a surge of blind rage overriding my fear. "You're behind this? Did you set this up to drive us apart?"
"Get a grip, James," Andrew snapped back, his tone dropping all pretense of politeness. "Do you really think I give a damn about your crumbling marriage? Chloe’s associates aren't playing games. They aren't trying to win a divorce settlement. They’re trying to recover a multi-million-dollar ledger you helped misappropriate five years ago during that corporate acquisition."
The room seemed to tilt. "What are you talking about? I didn't misappropriate anything!"
"That's not what the corporate audit says, and it's not what Chloe’s bosses believe," Andrew said coldly. "They think you hid the hard drive containing the offshore accounts when you walked away from her. And right now, they think Lauren has it because she was listed as your primary beneficiary on your private asset trust."
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"Lauren doesn't know anything about that!" I shouted.
"I know that, and you know that, but the men hunting us down don't," Andrew replied. "Meet me at the diner on 4th Street in twenty minutes. Come alone, or your children spend tonight in a trunk. Tick-tock, James."
