Chapter 10 - The Devil's Bargain
The red and blue emergency lights spun lazily against the white picket fence, casting long, erratic shadows across the suburban sidewalk. Julian stared at the glowing tablet screen in Marcus Sterling’s hand. The sat-nav coordinates were moving in real-time, matching the offshore routing numbers of the endowment fund.
“Why come to me?” Julian asked, his voice strained as he kept one hand firmly on Sophia’s shoulder. “If your bosses control the money, why not just let the feds take me down and keep the loot?”
Marcus sighed, adjusting his rimless glasses with a practiced, elegant gesture.
“Because the federal investigation won’t stop at you, Julian. The prosecutors are ambitious. Once they open the books, they’ll trace the capital all the way back to our primary stakeholders—people who don't appreciate having their names read aloud in a congressional hearing,” Marcus explained, his tone devoid of malice, sounding more like a corporate consultant delivering bad quarterly earnings. “We need the encryption keys that only you possess to cleanly sever the fund’s lineage from our accounts. In exchange, we scrub your name from the indictment, drop all claims against the charity, and leave you and your daughter completely alone.”
“Dad, don’t do it! It’s a trap!” Sophia pleaded, her small fingers digging desperately into Julian’s sleeve.
Julian looked down at his daughter. Her pale face was smudged with dirt from the living room floor, her vintage dress slightly torn at the hem. He had spent his entire life trying to protect her, yet every step he took seemed to drag her deeper into the toxic web he had woven.
“If I give you the keys, how do I know you won’t just leave us stranded here—or worse?” Julian demanded, stepping closer to Marcus.
“You don’t,” Marcus replied with brutal honesty. “You have to trust that I value efficiency over cruelty. We want our money cleaned and quiet. Corpses draw too many journalists, Mr. Vance.”
Julian’s jaw tightened. He glanced down the street; the police officers were still busy processing Arthur and loading Eleanor into the van. If he walked away now, he could let the authorities handle it, but he knew what would happen. The bureaucratic gears ground slowly; his reputation would be shredded, the charity would close its doors, and the children relying on its medical wing would suffer immediately.
“Give me your phone,” Julian said abruptly.
Marcus raised an eyebrow, pulling a burner smartphone from his pocket and unlocking it before handing it over.
Julian quickly dialed a sequence of numbers, routing a secondary decoy encryption protocol into the cloud storage server he kept in his home office.
“Here,” Julian said, handing the phone back. “Input this sequence into your terminal. It will uncouple the endowment fund from the main ledger.”
Marcus tapped the screen, reviewing the code. A subtle smile touched his lips.
“Pleasure doing business with you, Julian,” Marcus murmured, turning toward his car.
May you like
As Marcus opened the car door, a sharp gunshot rang out, shattering the back window of the sedan.
---
