Chapter 8 - THE REJECTION SLIP
Thomas’s arrogant laughter echoed off the glass walls of the 42nd-floor bullpen. He stood behind my old desk, leaning his weight against it as if he already owned the entire tower, the forty-five million dollar transfer pending on the laptop screen before him.
The three mercenaries flanking him shifted their weight, raising the barrels of their assault rifles just a fraction higher.
Larkin didn’t flinch. He stepped out of the elevator lobby, his pistol held steady, his body angled perfectly to shield me.
“You’re out of your depth, Thomas,” Larkin said, his voice cutting through the quiet office like a sheet of ice. “Vance is in federal custody, your offshore accounts are frozen, and your mercenaries are about twenty seconds away from committing federal treason.”
Thomas sneered, taking another sip of his scotch. “Don’t lecture me, cousin. You’ve gone soft. You let a pencil-pushing secretary wrap you around her little finger while our empire was ripe for the taking. But it doesn't matter what you say.”
Thomas turned his gaze directly to me, his eyes filled with malicious triumph.
“She’s going to sign the transfer. Because if she doesn't, I’ll wipe out every digital backup of her father’s legacy that I found in her apartment before we torched it.”
My chest tightened. The father’s journals. The personal audit records I thought were lost in the fire.
Thomas smiled wider, seeing my reaction. “That’s right, sweetheart. I saved your precious dad’s private notes. Refuse to sign, and I feed them to the shredder right now.”
The mercenaries chuckled darkly.
I took a slow breath. I looked at Thomas—at his designer suit, his smug, inherited entitlement, the man who thought he could buy, burn, and bully everyone around him.
I stepped out from behind Larkin.
“You think my father’s notes are your leverage, Thomas?” I asked, my voice terrifyingly calm.
“They’re the only thing keeping you from losing the last piece of him,” Thomas snapped, his patience wearing thin. “Sign the damn papers!”
“My father spent twenty years teaching me how to spot a fraudulent ledger,” I said, stepping closer, ignoring the barrels of the assault rifles pointed at my chest. “He taught me that men like you always make the same fatal mistake.”
“What are you blabbering about?”
“You didn't read the footnotes, Thomas,” I smiled. A sharp, predator’s smile.
I reached into my clutch bag and pulled out a small, encrypted flash drive—the exact drive I had secretly downloaded from the sub-servers before leaving the gala.
“Those journals you found in my apartment?” I continued, my voice ringing clear across the empty floor. “They were copies. The originals were encrypted and backed up to the syndicate’s secure cloud vault under a dead-man’s switch linked to my digital signature.”
Thomas’s smile vanished instantly. His face went chalk white.
“And as for the forty-five million dollars you’re trying to siphon?” I tapped the screen of my phone. “I didn't come up here to sign your transfer. I came up here to hit Reject.”
My thumb pressed firmly against the glass screen.
REJECTION AUTHORIZED. ACCOUNT FROZEN. SEC-19 COMPLIANCE PROTOCOL INITIATED.
The laptop screen on my old desk flashed a blinding, aggressive red. The transfer window vanished, replaced by an impenetrable security lock.
Thomas stared at the screen in utter horror. “No... no, no, no! That’s impossible!”
“You’re audited, Thomas,” I said softly.
Before Thomas could scream for his men to fire, Larkin moved.
With blinding speed, Larkin raised his pistol and fired three precise shots into the shoulders and legs of the two nearest mercenaries. They collapsed instantly, howling in pain, their rifles clattering onto the floor.
The third mercenary swung his assault rifle toward Larkin, but before he could pull the trigger, I stepped forward and drove the steel-tipped heel of my stiletto straight down through his boot into his instep.
The man shrieked, dropping his weapon as I swept his legs out from under him with a clean, practiced judo kick that sent him crashing hard into the glass partition.
In less than five seconds, the threat was neutralized.
Thomas backed away, trembling violently, tripping over my old office chair and crashing to the floor.
May you like
Larkin walked slowly around the desk, standing over his cousin, the barrel of his pistol pointing straight between Thomas’s eyes.
“You broke family law, Thomas,” Larkin said, his voice devoid of any human emotion. “And in our world, the books always have to balance.”
