Chapter 7 - The Wire That Didn't Snap00:01...
The red LED digits froze.
No deafening blast. No shockwave tearing through the ancient pines. Just the hollow, rhythmic ticking of a dead circuit board shorted out by the freezing sleet pouring down from the upper atmosphere.
I sat back in the mud, gasping for breath, my hands shaking uncontrollably as I stared at the frozen timer.
It was a dummy charge.
Marcus and Elena hadn't rigged a live high-explosive ordnance. They weren't psychotic enough to murder a dog in cold blood—they were cold, calculating cowards who used terror as a psychological lever, not amateur killers willing to trigger a murder charge that would put them away for life without parole. The explosive was real casing, real wiring, but the detonator core had been intentionally hollowed out.
A cruel, sick psychological experiment designed to break me down before I reached the boardroom.
“You bastards,” I whispered into the empty forest air.
I reached down, pulled a heavy steel pry bar from the Land Rover’s emergency kit, hooked it beneath the brass padlock, and threw my entire body weight into the lever. With a sharp, metallic crack, the shackle snapped.
The chain fell away into the mud.
I wrapped my arms around Bruno’s massive shoulders, hoisting his dead weight against my chest. At 150 pounds of solid muscle and wet fur, carrying him through fifty yards of mud to the back of the Land Rover nearly tore my back muscles apart, but I didn't stop until I had settled him safely onto a bed of heavy woolen blankets in the cargo bay, cranking the vehicle's interior heater to maximum.
As the warm air began to circulate, Bruno’s heavy eyelids fluttered. A low, rumbling groan vibrated deep within his chest, followed by a familiar, heavy black head nudging weakly against my knee.
He was alive.
My phone buzzed in my coat pocket. Not an encrypted message this time—a standard cellular voice call.
I pulled it out and pressed accept.
“It’s over, Marcus,” I said, before he could speak. “The private jet didn't make it out of state airspace. State police intercepted the charter at a refueling stop in Indianapolis ten minutes ago. Your accounts are frozen. Your offshore trusts are being seized under federal Patriot Act provisions. And Elena is currently singing a very detailed aria about your embezzlement scheme to the U.S. Attorney.”
Silence hummed over the line for a long, agonizing moment.
When Marcus finally spoke, his voice lacked its usual arrogant polish. It sounded thin, desperate, and utterly hollow.
“You don't understand the half of it, Adrian,” Marcus muttered. “We didn't steal your money because we were greedy. We stole it because we had to pay them back.”
“Pay who back?”
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“The people who own Vance-Sterling Holdings on paper, Adrian. You were never the majority stakeholder. You were just the front man.”
Before I could process the words, a black unmarked sedan materialized out of the dense forest fog, blocking the logging trail behind my Land Rover, its high-beam headlights blinding me in the freezing rain.
