Chapter 6 - The Trap Snaps Shut
Ethan straightened his tie with trembling hands, trying desperately to reassemble the fragments of his shattered composure. He looked around the boardroom, searching for an ally, but every single director had recoiled from him as if he were carrying the plague.
“This is an ambush,” Ethan sneered, his voice trembling with cornered rage. “Even if these documents are real—which they aren't—you have no legal standing, Avery! Arthur Vance has your medical power of attorney! You were declared legally incompetent by Dr. Harrison on Monday!”
“Dr. Harrison was stripped of his medical license three hours ago,” Detective Miller interjected, stepping forward and flashing his gold badge. “He’s currently sitting in an interrogation room downtown, singing like a canary about the five-hundred-thousand-dollar kickback you wired him through a shell clinic in Delaware to falsify Mrs. Winslow’s neurological scans.”
Ethan’s knees nearly buckled. He grabbed the back of a chair to stay upright. “That’s... that’s impossible.”
“Nothing is impossible when you’re sloppy, Ethan,” Avery said, her voice dripping with ice. “You thought because Avery couldn't speak quickly, she couldn't understand. You thought because she had trouble defending herself, she had no memory. But I remember everything.”
Avery tapped the tablet again.
The boardroom speakers crackled to life.
Ethan’s own voice blasted through the room with crystal clarity:
“The delivery truck is rented under a fake LLC... We hit her car on Route 32 near the reservoir bridge... Make sure it looks like an accident. She panics in the rain. If she goes over the guardrail, nobody will question it.”
Silence descended upon the boardroom—heavy, suffocating, and absolute.
Every single executive turned to look at Ethan Holt. Gregory Vance looked as though he wanted to physically vomit.
“Attempted murder,” Detective Miller stated, pulling a pair of steel handcuffs from his tactical belt. “Conspiracy to commit first-degree homicide. Wire fraud. Grand larceny. Money laundering. Do you want me to read the rest of the federal indictment here, Mr. Holt, or would you prefer we do it at the precinct?”
Ethan’s eyes darted frantically toward the exit doors. He was only ten feet away.
In a burst of sheer, cowardly panic, Ethan spun around and bolted toward the hallway, slamming his shoulder into the boardroom doors, bursting out into the elevator lobby.
“Stop him!” Gregory shouted.
Avery didn't move. She didn't even flinch. She sat gracefully at the head of the table, sipping a glass of water Thomas Drake had poured for her.
“Don't bother running, Ethan,” Avery murmured softly, though he was already gone.
Ethan sprinted into the executive elevator, frantically hammering the button for the underground parking garage. The brushed-metal doors slid shut just as security guards rounded the corner. Ethan collapsed against the elevator wall, his chest heaving, sweat soaking through his four-thousand-dollar suit.
I have the Mercedes, he thought frantically. I have the passport in the glove box. I have the secondary offshore account in Panama. I can cross into Canada by midnight.
The elevator chime rang smoothly. Level B2 - Executive Parking.
The doors parted.
Ethan sprinted out into the dimly lit, concrete garage toward his sleek black Mercedes-AMG. He pulled his electronic key fob from his pocket and clicked the unlock button.
The lights didn't flash.
The horn didn't chirp.
Instead, the headlights of three black, unmarked SUVs parked directly behind his vehicle flared to life, blinding him with high-beam halogen glare.
Ethan shielded his eyes, stumbling backward.
Four towering men in tailored black overcoats stepped out from behind the SUVs. They didn't look like police officers. They had the cold, dead eyes, tactical posture, and scarred knuckles of professional underworld enforcers—men who handled problems that courts were too delicate to touch.
The leader of the group, a scarred man with a titanium signet ring on his pinky, stepped forward.
“Ethan Holt?” the man asked in a low, gravelly rasp.
“W-who are you?” Ethan stammered, his bladder threatening to release. “Are you with the police? I want a lawyer!”
The scarred man tilted his head, pulling a burner phone from his pocket. On the screen was a live video feed of Avery Winslow sitting in the boardroom upstairs.
The man spoke into the phone: “We have the package, Queen.”
From the phone's tiny speaker, Avery’s smooth, icy voice emerged: “Don't break his legs yet, Viktor. Just take his keys, his passport, and bring him back up to the lobby. The police have waited twenty minutes for this arrest, and I believe in punctuality.”
The man named Viktor snapped the phone shut and smiled, showing gold-capped teeth. “Understood, Boss.”
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Ethan’s mind fractured in pure, unadulterated terror. Queen? Who the hell was this woman?!
Before he could scream, Viktor’s fist drove deep into his solar plexus, knocking every cubic inch of oxygen from his lungs. Ethan crumpled to the oily concrete like a wet rag.
