Chapter 5 - The Trap at Vance & SterlingAt 8:00 A.M. the following morning, a crisp, golden November sun painted the glass skyscrapers of Midtown Chicago in brilliant shades of gold and sapphire.
Inside the top-floor executive suite of Vance & Sterling Asset Management on Michigan Avenue, forty-five-year-old Gideon Vance sat behind his wide mahogany desk. He wore a tailored charcoal suit, sipping dark espresso, holding a thick leather folder containing the trust transfer papers he intended to force Ryan to sign.
Sitting across from him in a leather chair was Ryan Miller. Ryan looked hollowed out from within—his shirt crumpled, his dark hair unkempt, his eyes bloodshot and bloodless.
"Well, Ryan," Gideon sneered smoothly, sliding a gold Montblanc pen across the polished wood. "Today is your wife's thirty-third birthday. The trust funds are unlocked. Sign the secondary authorization releasing the three million dollars to clear your four-hundred-and-eighty-thousand-dollar debt... or my firm executes the foreclosure on your Maple Ridge house by noon."
Ryan didn't touch the pen. He sat staring at the floorboards, trembling silently.
"Sign the paper, Ryan," Gideon demanded, his tone dropping into a cold, dangerous whisper. "Don't be a fool."
BOOM!
The heavy carved oak double doors of the executive suite were pushed open with a deliberate, sovereign force that made the brass handles crack against the walls.
Walking into the suite, flanked by Rebecca Hayes and two broad-shouldered forensic investigators carrying heavy black ledgers, was me.
I wore an immaculate midnight-blue tailored pantsuit, my dark hair swept back in an elegant, professional knot, my hazel eyes holding an absolute, unshakeable heat that dropped the temperature in the room below zero.
Behind me walked Sophie Vance.
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Gideon jumped out of his leather chair, slamming his coffee cup flat onto the desk. "WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS INTERRUPTION?! Sophie! What are you doing with these people?!"
"She's standing beside the woman whose trust you tried to steal, Gideon," I spoke cleanly into the quiet suite. My voice carried an unyielding, velvet power that echoed off the high ceiling.
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