Ayla looked up at him warily. “How?”
Cassius pointed a long finger at the titanium food box sitting on his desk.
“You are going to sit in that chair,” he said, “and you are going to eat that meal with me. Every single bite.”
Ayla stared at him. The most feared billionaire on Wall Street was using a dinner as extortion.
She pushed herself off the floor, crossed the room, and lowered herself into the heavy leather chair opposite his desk. She reached out and unlatched the titanium box.
In the dim blue light of the financial monitors, the two most damaged people in New York sat in complete silence, sharing a meal built on a foundation of lies and dangerous obsession.
It was past midnight. The underground executive parking garage of the Farrell Group headquarters was completely silent, save for the low hum of massive ventilation fans.
The air was suffocatingly heavy. A dozen armed security guards stood in a rigid line against the concrete wall, too terrified to breathe too loudly.
Axel Farrell stood in the center of the garage. He hadn’t gone home. He hadn’t slept. His tuxedo was ruined, his eyes bloodshot – a man standing on the absolute edge of a psychotic break. The congressional hearing had imploded, his Washington schedule had been canceled, and he had flown back to New York in the middle of the night to contain the chaos. But the real chaos was happening inside his own skull.
Sitting in the brightly lit inspection bay was the black Ford Explorer. The right front bumper was heavily crushed and scraped, the metal twisted from an impact the security reports couldn’t fully explain. The towing company had just dropped it off.
Jared approached, sweating profusely, holding out a thick leather-bound financial dossier with visibly shaking hands.
“Sir,” he stammered. “We traced the vehicle’s GPS. We also pulled the financial records you requested regarding your wife’s assets.”
Axel snatched the folder and ripped it open. “Read it to me.”
Jared swallowed hard. “Two days ago, Ayla went to a vintage luxury dealer in SoHo. She liquidated fifteen of the limited-edition Hermes bags you bought her and sold them for three million dollars. The funds were issued via a Swiss bearer check. Completely untraceable and unfreezable.”
Axel’s body went rigid. The folder slipped from his hands and hit the concrete floor with a loud slap.
Three million dollars.
He had spent three days believing Ayla was starving – that he had cut off her oxygen, that she was suffering and begging for his credit cards. Instead, she had walked out of his house, sold his gifts, and made herself a multi-millionaire in a single afternoon.
A wave of pure, emasculating humiliation crashed over him.
Axel let out a guttural roar. He lunged forward and drove his foot into the front tire of the Ford Explorer.
“Open the car!” he screamed at the security team. “Tear it apart! I want every inch of this vehicle searched!”
The guards scrambled, ripping out floor mats, pulling apart the interior, emptying the glove box. Axel shoved one of them aside and threw himself into the back seat, crawling over the upholstery, his hands feeling blindly beneath the cushions, his chest heaving with manic energy.
Then he stopped.
He inhaled sharply. The smell was faint, but in the enclosed space of the car it was unmistakable – cold cedar, whiskey, and a very specific bespoke tobacco cologne.
Axel knew that scent. He had encountered it across ballrooms and boardrooms for years. It was Cassius Gilliam’s signature fragrance, custom-made and impossible to mistake.
His hands began to tremble.
He pressed his face against the seats like a bloodhound. The scent was strongest in the back, deep in the fabric, as though someone had sat there for an extended period of time. He pulled out a small flashlight and shone it into the seam where the seat met the backrest.
There.
Several short strands of hair. Deep brown. Not Ayla’s long black hair. Not his own.
Axel’s fingers reached out, shaking violently, and pinched the hairs between his thumb and forefinger. He held them up to the light.
He had studied Cassius Gilliam’s face in board meetings, financial reports, and his own nightmares for years. The color, the thickness, the length – it matched perfectly.
The pieces slammed together in his mind like a collision.
Ayla had taken his corporate car. She had met with Cassius. Cassius had sat in the back seat of Axel’s own vehicle, lingering, leaving behind his scent and his hair.
The paranoia detonated in Axel’s chest. He pictured them together in the back of the SUV – close, intimate, laughing at him.
“No!” Axel screamed, the sound tearing his vocal cords raw.
He lunged at the seat, clawing at the upholstery with his bare hands. The thick fabric tore beneath his fingernails. He slammed his fist into the window. The glass spiderwebbed with cracks. Blood sprayed from his knuckles.
Jared and the guards stumbled backward. No one dared approach.
Axel stood in the center of the garage, chest heaving, blood dripping from his hand onto the concrete. His eyes were completely vacant.
“Jared,” Axel said. His voice was no longer screaming. It had dropped to a hollow, terrifying whisper.
Jared stepped forward. “Yes, sir?”
“Call the legal team,” Axel ordered, his gaze fixed on the bloody hairs still clutched in his fist. “Draft a warrant for her immediate arrest. The charge is corporate espionage. She sold company secrets to a competitor.”
He turned his head slowly toward the trembling assistant.
“And call the federal banking regulators,” he continued, his voice dripping with quiet venom. “Tell them an anonymous whistleblower has evidence that Ayla Joyce is using offshore accounts to launder money. Freeze every asset attached to her name. Even the blind trusts. I want her penniless.”
Axel looked down at the torn seat, the cracked window, the blood spreading across his knuckles.
“If she wants to sleep with the devil,” he whispered, a sick smile twisting his lips, “I am going to make sure she burns in hell.”
The cold, grey morning light filtered through the floor-to-ceiling windows of Ayla’s Chelsea apartment.
Ayla stood in the sleek, marble-countered kitchen, tying the belt of her trench coat. She grabbed the heavy brown paper bag containing the hundred thousand dollars in cash. She needed to stock up on food for the week and lie low until Monday.
She took the private elevator down to the lobby and approached the main glass security doors. She stepped up to the biometric retina scanner and looked into the lens.
Instead of the usual soft green chime, the machine let out a harsh, piercing alarm. The heavy magnetic locks on the glass doors engaged with a loud clunk, sealing the exit.
Ayla stepped back.
The management office door swung open. The building manager – a tall man with a severe expression – marched out, flanked by two massive armed security guards. Gone was the groveling politeness he had shown the day before.
“Miss Joyce. Step away from the doors.”
“Is the scanner broken?” Ayla asked, keeping her voice calm.
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