Chapter 3 - The Ambush at the Office
I didn't hide. Hiding is what victims do. I went straight to my office in the financial district. I needed the firm’s heavy-duty servers to subpoena the rest of Derek's bank records.
At 7:00 PM, the office was mostly empty. The rain lashed against the floor-to-ceiling windows. I was printing out a massive ledger of Derek's forged signatures when the elevator dinged.
I turned. Derek stepped out.
He looked terrible. His tailored suit was wrinkled, his eyes bloodshot, and he smelled faintly of scotch and panic.
"How did you get past security?" I demanded, my hand slowly reaching for the heavy brass paperweight on my desk.
"Elena still had your spare keycard," he slurred, stepping into the dim light. "You need to fix this. You need to call the cops and tell them the audio was a deepfake. You need to sign the loan, or we are both dead."
"I know about Volkov, Derek," I said smoothly.
He stopped dead in his tracks.
"I tracked the wire transfers," I continued. "You owe them nearly two million dollars. Strangling me isn't going to make that go away."
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He lunged at me, but I was ready this time. I hurled the brass paperweight. It struck him square in the jaw. He stumbled backward, crashing into a glass partition. Before he could recover, the building's security guards, whom I had texted the moment the elevator dinged, swarmed the floor.
"Strike two, Derek," I whispered as they dragged him away.
