Chapter 18 - The Collapse of the Cartel
“Shut it down! Smash it!” Richard Vance shrieked, his face turning the color of curdled milk as he hurled the flash drive against the marble floor, stomping on it frantically with his Italian leather shoes.
It was too late.
Across the country—from the newsrooms of Manhattan to the congressional hearing rooms in Washington, D.C., and the independent servers of global investigative journalism networks—the firewall had been shattered. The unedited, fully decrypted records of Marcus Vance, Aegis Capital, and their network of corrupted federal officials were now living on the public internet, impossible to scrub, impossible to hide.
“You’re ruined, Richard,” Adrien said quietly, walking down the grand staircase at a slow, deliberate pace, stepping right past the stunned tactical agents who didn't dare raise their weapons against him. “Your brother’s empire is dust. And your career ended about thirty seconds ago.”
Richard lunged forward, drawing a backup pistol from his shoulder holster, screaming in psychotic rage. “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you all—!”
He never got the chance.
Marco stepped out from behind a shattered pillar, swung the butt of his tactical carbine with brutal efficiency, and slammed it directly into Richard’s jaw. The Assistant Attorney General collapsed unconscious onto the marble floor, his weapon clattering away into a pool of stagnant water.
Silence descended upon the grand foyer.
The federal tactical agents looked at each other, then down at their unconscious superior, and slowly lowered their weapons. The warrant was dead. The mission was compromised. The system they had been sent to protect had just been exposed for what it truly was.
“Get him out of my house,” Adrien commanded coldly, gesturing toward the unconscious prosecutor.
May you like
Two federal agents swallowed hard, stepped forward, hoisted Richard Vance by his arms, and dragged him backward toward the shattered front doors, their boots crunching on the glass.
Within five minutes, the Alpine estate was empty of federal invaders. The flashing red and blue lights of the DOJ convoy faded down the private drive, swallowed by the torrential rain of the New York night.
