Chapter 5 - PLAYING THE ENEMYFor the next forty-eight hours, Elliot Vance became a ghost.
He didn't return to his luxury apartment. He didn't go to his executive suite on the top floor of Vance Tower. Instead, he rented a secluded, unmarked industrial loft in the docks of East Boston.
Inside the loft, walls were covered with financial charts, family trees, and legal documents. Naomi sat at a metal table, her laptop illuminated in the dark room, furiously going through banking records. What Camille and Marcus didn't realize was that Naomi wasn't just a former schoolteacher—she had spent the last three years working as a financial data auditor for a non-profit organization in Maine. She knew how to track money.
“Look at this, Elliot,” Naomi said, pointing her screen toward him.
Elliot leaned over her shoulder. His face was pale, dark circles shadowing his eyes from lack of sleep.
“What is it?”
“The two million dollars your father sent me three years ago,” Naomi explained, tapping the screen. “I never touched it, right? It was kept in an escrow account. But look at the routing numbers. The money didn't come from your father’s personal bank account. It came from a shell company registered in Delaware called Aegis Holdings.”
Elliot frowned. “Aegis Holdings? That’s one of Camille’s family’s private investment arms.”
Naomi looked up at him, her eyes dark. “Marcus didn't pay me off three years ago, Elliot. Camille’s father did.”
Elliot’s mind reeled. “What? Why would the Rhodes family pay you to leave me three years ago?”
“Because three years ago, Vance Enterprises was secretly on the verge of bankruptcy,” Naomi revealed, clicking through a series of decrypted financial audits. “Your father was embezzling money from his own pension funds to cover illegal offshore investments. Camille’s father found out. Instead of exposing your father, Mr. Rhodes used that information to blackmail Marcus. They forced the marriage agreement between you and Camille to bail out Vance Enterprises. But they had one problem: you were in love with me.”
The puzzle pieces violently clicked into place.
Naomi hadn't been an inconvenient distraction for a wealthy family. She had been the only obstacle stopping the Rhodes family from executing a hostile takeover of Vance Enterprises through marriage!
“They framed you,” Elliot whispered, horror dawning on him. “They made it look like my father paid you off, but it was Camille’s father all along. They set up the paper trail to make you look like a greedy extortionist so they could steal Bella if you ever returned!”
“And now they hold Bella in a private state-contracted foster home in North Boston,” Naomi said, tears brimming in her eyes again. “They’re keeping her away from me using falsified psychological records signed by a doctor who is on the board of Rhodes Financial.”
Elliot reached down, grasping Naomi’s hand firmly. “We aren't going to court, Naomi. Courts take months, and they own the judges.”
“Then what are we going to do?”
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Elliot pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed a number he hadn't called in ten years—a contact from his dark past, before he became the golden-boy CEO.
“Marcus and Camille think they’re playing high-society chess,” Elliot said, his eyes burning with an intense, vengeful light. “It’s time to show them what happens when you kidnap a father’s daughter.”
