Chapter 5 - The Rat TrapThe silence that followed Brittany’s scream was absolute.
Ethan stared at the shattered tablet on the stairs, his brain refusing to process the words. "Gone? What do you mean gone? That's impossible! I set up multi-factor authentication, biometric locks, Swiss encryption—"
"Swiss encryption doesn't mean a damn thing when the parent company owning the routing server is Cross National Insurance," a cool, calm voice echoed from the elevator foyer.
Ethan whipped his head around.
The private elevator doors slid open once more. But this time, it wasn't Marcus or Viktor standing inside.
It was me.
I stepped out of the elevator wearing a long, sweeping black wool coat, my silver-haired father, Jonathan Cross, standing protectively right behind my left shoulder. My dark hair fell in loose waves around my shoulders, and my posture was completely upright, radiant, and radiating an icy, untouchable power.
Ethan froze mid-breath. His jaw dropped so low it looked like it might dislocate.
"E... Emily?" Ethan whispered, stumbling backward until his spine hit the living room wall. He looked at me, then down at the floor, then back up at me as if he were staring face-to-face with an actual demon. "No... no, that's impossible. I pushed you! I watched you fall twelve hundred feet into the gorge! I saw you die!"
"You saw a decoy winter gear dummy stuffed with twenty pounds of raw beef liver and a tracking beacon that I threw over the ledge just before you pushed me," I said, my voice cutting through the penthouse like a razor blade as I walked slowly toward him.
I stopped five feet away, looking down at my pathetic, trembling husband with absolute, crushing pity.
"You really thought you were the smartest man in the room, didn't you, Ethan?" I asked, tilting my head. "You thought you could marry me for my family connections, steal my mother’s inheritance, and then murder me in the middle of a blizzard to collect a fifty-million-dollar payout?"
Brittany sprinted down the stairs, panic distorting her face into an ugly mask, and threw herself at my feet, grabbing the hem of my coat.
"Emily! Em, please!" Brittany sobbed hysterically, her mascara running down her cheeks. "It was all him! Ethan forced me! He threatened to kill me if I didn't help him set you up! I was just a pawn, Em! We were best friends, remember? Please don't let them hurt me!"
I looked down at Brittany, my expression completely blank. Then, slowly, I reached down and gently peeled her fingers off my coat.
"Best friends, Brittany?" I asked softly. "Is that what you call the woman who slipped sedatives into my tea while smiling in my face at my own baby shower?"
Brittany’s face instantly drained of all color. Her jaw clamped shut, her sobbing cutting off mid-breath as she realized the game was entirely up.
"You... you knew?" Brittany whispered, horror dawning in her eyes.
"I knew about the affair three months ago," I said calmly, turning my gaze back to Ethan, who was now sliding down the wall into a pathetic heap on the floor. "I knew about the Vegas debts. I knew about your offshore shell corporation. I knew everything."
Ethan looked up at me, his eyes bloodshot, desperation oozing from every pore. "Emily... please. We're married. We have a child coming—"
"Correction, Ethan," I interrupted, my voice dropping an octave, cold and absolute. "You have no wife. You have no money. And you have no future."
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I turned slightly toward Jonathan, who gave a sharp, precise nod.
Step three was officially complete.
