Chapter 10 - The Missing Deed
"What do you mean it was cleared out?" Emma asked, stepping forward, the chill returning to her veins. "Julian and Victor were here. Who else could have accessed my mother’s safety deposit box?"
Agent Miller opened her folder, displaying high-resolution surveillance stills taken from the private banking vault in the financial district. The timestamp was barely ninety minutes old.
In the photograph, a woman dressed in a sleek red trench coat was calmly sliding a thick titanium lockbox into a leather attaché case. Her face was partially shadowed by a wide-brimmed hat, but her profile was unmistakable.
Emma felt the floor drop beneath her feet. "Victoria..." she whispered.
It was the woman from the penthouse. The same woman Julian had discarded Emma for—the one who had smirked from Julian's sofa and whispered that he had chosen her.
"Victoria isn't a socialite mistress," Marcus said, his voice dropping an octave, deadly and low. "She’s a senior operative for the Lucian Syndicate’s internal affairs division. She was never Julian's lover—she was his handler."
"She played Julian like a fiddle," Agent Miller confirmed. "She let Julian take the fall, allowed him to create a massive diversion by staging an assault on your manor, while she walked into the Manhattan vault using a forged biometric duplicate of Miss Cross's signature."
"Where is she going?" Marcus demanded, his jaw tight.
"A private helipad on the West Side," Miller replied, checking her tactical radio. "She has a chopper waiting to take her to an offshore freighter registered under a Panamanian flag outside international waters. If that ship leaves territorial waters with that titanium box, your mother’s sovereign wealth trust will be dissolved and absorbed into black accounts in the Cayman Islands forever."
Emma looked down at her hands, still bruised from where she had torn off Julian’s engagement ring. All of this—the heartbreak, the betrayal, the lies—had been a masterclass in theft. They had broken her heart simply to keep her distracted while they robbed her family blind.
"Marcus," Emma said, turning to him with an intensity that made Agent Miller raise an eyebrow. "We aren't letting her leave this city."
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Marcus looked at Emma, seeing not the fragile girl who had been crying on the riverbank hours ago, but a woman ready to take back everything that belonged to her. A rare, dangerous smile crossed his face.
"Get your coat, Emma," Marcus said, grabbing his keys from the sideboard. "We have a helicopter to catch."
