Chapter 8
The sharp, rhythmic pounding on the heavy iron doors at the end of cell block B cut through the sterile silence like a gunshot. Arthur and Marcus stopped in their tracks, turning back toward the source of the commotion. Two armed guards rushed past them, unholstering their Tasers as they sprinted toward an isolated isolation cell marked with a red warning plaque.
“Stay back, inmates!” one of the guards shouted, slamming his baton against the bars of Cell 415.
Inside the isolation cell, a disheveled man with wild gray hair and hollow, frantic eyes was pressing his face against the wired glass window. He wasn't an ordinary prisoner; he was Viktor Rostov, a former high-level financial auditor who had vanished from the international banking scene five years ago—right around the time he was scheduled to testify against a massive offshore money-laundering syndicate connected directly to the Sterling Foundation.
“Sterling! Listen to me!” Viktor screamed, his voice hoarse and raw from weeks of solitary confinement. “Your son-in-law didn't work alone! The laundering ring goes all the way to the board of directors!”
Arthur’s heart skipped a beat. He stepped away from Marcus and walked briskly back down the corridor, stopping directly in front of Viktor’s cell.
“Who else is involved, Viktor?” Arthur demanded, grabbing the steel bars with both hands. “Give me names!”
Viktor let out a harsh, bitter laugh that sounded more like a cough. “You think Thomas was the mastermind? He was just the errand boy! The real person pulling the strings has been sitting at your right hand during every board meeting for the past twelve years!”
Marcus rushed up behind his grandfather, grabbing his shoulder. “Grandpa, don't listen to him. This lunatic has been in solitary for months; he’s probably hallucinating.”
“I’m not hallucinating, you arrogant fool!” Viktor yelled, pressing a sheaf of crumpled, smuggled-out papers against the wire mesh of the cell window. “Look at the secondary signatory on the shell company accounts! Look at who authorized the transfer of the primary trust funds the day after Catherine died!”
Arthur snatched the crumpled papers through a gap in the mesh. He unfolded them under the harsh overhead fluorescent light, his eyes scanning the corporate signatures at the bottom of the audit trail. The signature wasn’t Thomas’s. It belonged to Julian Vance, Thomas’s own estranged brother and the current senior legal counsel for Sterling Global Enterprises.
A cold numbness crept over Arthur’s limbs. Julian had been the one comforting him at Catherine’s funeral a decade ago. Julian had drafted the legal protections for little Lily.
“Julian...” Arthur whispered, the name tasting like ash in his mouth.
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Viktor gripped the wire mesh from the inside, his eyes wide with desperate urgency. “Julian didn't just help launder the money, Mr. Sterling. He was on the yacht in Greece. He’s the one who held your daughter down while Thomas cut the safety harness.”
Before Arthur could process the horrifying implication of Viktor’s words, the emergency alarm throughout the holding facility suddenly shrieked to life, flashing blinding crimson lights across the gray concrete walls.
