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THREE DAYS AFTER OUR WEDDING, MY HUSBAND TRIED TO “TEACH ME OBEDIENCE”—HE HAD NO IDEA WHAT I DID EVERY NIGHT AFTER WORK / Chapter 7 / 9

Chapter 8 - THE CONFESSION ON TAPEThe intruder—who identified himself under interrogation by my private security team as Viktor "The Butcher" Petrov, a notorious enforcer for an Eastern European syndicate—was currently tied securely to my reinforced steel dining chair.

I stood over him, holding his encrypted burner phone in one hand and a cup of freshly brewed coffee in the other.

"You're out of your mind," Viktor snarled, struggling against the heavy industrial zip-ties binding his wrists to the chair. "When my bosses find out about this—"

"Your bosses are currently too busy deleting their digital footprints because I just forwarded their entire ledger of illegal offshore transactions to Interpol," I interrupted smoothly, tapping the screen of his phone.

Viktor’s eyes widened in sheer terror. "You... you what?"

"I'm a financial analyst, Viktor. Money leaves tracks. And syndicates leave paper trails when they use standard wire transfers to pay off real estate agents," I smiled, pulling up a live video feed on my tablet. "While you were breaking in, my automated firewall intercepted your communication network. Your syndicate's primary servers in Cyprus were seized by federal authorities forty-two seconds ago."

"You're bluffing!"

"Am I?" I turned the tablet toward him. The screen displayed a live broadcast of federal agents raiding a luxury warehouse downtown—the very warehouse Viktor operated out of.

Viktor slumped back in the chair, all the fight draining out of his broad frame. "Gregory... that idiot said you were just an easy mark. He said you were obsessed with work and completely blind to reality."

"Gregory made a lot of bad calculations," I said softly, walking over to the window and looking out at the glittering city skyline. "He thought marriage was a trap to catch a woman. He didn't realize he had just walked into a cage with a predator."

A loud banging at the front door interrupted us.

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The heavy mahogany door of the dressing room seemed to close in on us, trapping the suffocating tension inside. Richard’s hands were shaking as he clutched the small, tarnished silver pendant. His knuckles were bone-white.

The heavy mahogany door of the dressing room seemed to close in on us, t...

The heavy silver fork slipped from my fingers, clattering sharply against the gold-rimmed porcelain of my dinner plate.

The heavy silver fork slipped from my fingers, clattering sharply agains...

The heavy mahogany door of the Fairmont Copley suite clicked shut with a muffled, expensive thud.

The heavy mahogany door of the Fairmont Copley suite clicked shut with a...

"Police! Open up!"

I glanced at the timer on my wall. Right on schedule. I had triggered the silent duress alarm the moment Viktor stepped through my door.

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