Chapter 13 - The True Architect
Marcus looked up, his face bruised and swollen, a bloody cut splitting his brow. The smug, detached husband who had abandoned his family on a sunny suburban porch had vanished, replaced by a broken man trembling in terror.
""Clara..."" he croaked, his voice raw. ""You shouldn't have come here. You have to get the boys and leave town right now.""
""Where are the bonds, Marcus?"" Clara demanded, her voice devoid of sympathy. ""Where is the money you sold our lives for?""
""There are no bonds,"" Marcus wept, shaking his head against the cold steel of the chair. ""It was never about an escape fund. It was a trade. I had to deliver the ledger hard drive to them here, or they were going to execute all three of you at the house. I made them think I was running so they would follow me, not you!""
""You're lying,"" Clara said, taking a step backward, repulsed by his desperate words. ""You left our luggage on the porch. You emptied our accounts. You turned off your phone.""
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""Because they were listening!"" Marcus shouted, tears carving tracks through the grime on his face. ""If I warned you, they would have known! I left the text message so the wiretaps would record me severing ties. Clara, the man who called your house wasn't an associate. He runs the entire syndicate. And he's already here.""
A slow, deliberate clapping sounded from the dark entrance of the storage corridor. Clara spun around, her breath catching in her throat. Stepping from the shadows was not an unknown cartel enforcer, but Richard—the soft-spoken receptionist from Marcus's office, holding a suppressed pistol at his side.
