Chapter 7 - The Maid’s AceViktor cocked the hammer of his pistol, his finger tightening against the trigger.
"Any last words, boss?" Viktor asked coldly.
Declan didn't flinch. Even staring down the barrel of a gun held by his most trusted man, he looked like a king ready to fall on his own sword. "You underestimated my security protocol, Viktor."
Viktor frowned. "What protocol?"
Emma stepped out from the shadows of the doorway, holding up a small, blinking smartphone.
"While you two were busy monologuing like villains in a bad movie," Emma said clearly, her voice echoing in the glass greenhouse, "I used Declan’s encrypted satellite phone to connect to the estate’s master mainframe. Every word of Meredith’s confession about torturing the twins, and Viktor’s explicit admission of corporate treason and conspiracy, has been live-streaming directly to the personal terminal of Federal Prosecutor James Sterling for the last three minutes."
Meredith’s face went instantly pale. "What?! Give me that phone!"
She lunged toward Emma, but Viktor grabbed her arm, his eyes darting frantically toward the door as the distant wail of police sirens suddenly pierced the coastal quiet.
"You absolute fool!" Viktor snarled at Meredith. "You said the comms were jammed!"
"They were!" Meredith shrieked, panic finally taking over her manicured facade. "She must have used a secondary relay!"
"Sirens coming from the north and south," Emma noted calmly, slipping the phone back into her pocket. "And federal marshals are already securing the perimeter of this property. You don't have forty percent of an empire, Viktor. You have a one-way ticket to a maximum-security federal penitentiary."
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Viktor raised his gun toward Emma in blind, desperate rage—
Bang.
