Chapter 7 - The Devil's EgoNew York welcomed me with glittering lights and cold, towering skyscrapers. It was a city I once called home, but now it just felt like a red-carpeted battlefield.
Alexander took me to his Manhattan penthouse—a sprawling, minimalist fortress of reinforced glass and a security system that rivaled the Pentagon. There were no maids. There was no fake, pretentious art. Everything here screamed absolute control.
"Drink," Alexander set a glass of neat bourbon on the glass coffee table in front of me. "You're going to need it."
I sat on the black leather sofa, opening the dossier his team had printed out. Endless strings of routing numbers, authorization contracts, and... my signature.
I ran my finger over the ink. The forgery was so perfect I almost believed I had signed it myself.
"He did this during our third year of marriage," I muttered as the memory surfaced. That was the year I had severe pneumonia and was hospitalized for a month. Ethan had sat by my bed, playing the perfect husband. He had handed me dozens of insurance forms and hospital bills to sign. I had been blinded by medication and absolute trust.
"He slipped the offshore authorization papers right between your medical bills," Alexander said, crossing his arms and leaning against the glass window, looking down at the city. "He is a viper. He planned for his downfall before it even happened, and he used you as a human shield."
I took a sip of the bourbon. It burned my throat but cleared my mind. "So what do we need to drain the accounts and erase my name?"
"The Cayman accounts are protected by dual-layer encryption," Alexander explained. "We already have your biometric voice and fingerprint keys. But the second layer is a physical authentication token. A military-grade encrypted USB drive."
"Ethan is in federal prison. He couldn't take it with him."
"Exactly. He hid it," Alexander turned around, his sharp eyes locking onto mine. "Think, Amelia. Where would a paranoid, controlling narcissist like Ethan hide the most important object in his life? Not a bank, because he trusts no one. Not the Willow Creek mansion, because the FBI tore it apart."
I closed my eyes. The image of Ethan flashed in my mind. He was obsessed with power. He loved to flaunt his wealth, but he hid his filth in places... no one would ever suspect.
Suddenly, a memory sparked.
"His mother's private gallery," my eyes snapped open. "Eleanor has a private art gallery on the Upper East Side. Ethan once 'donated' a very old, remarkably ugly still-life painting to her collection. I asked him why he hung such a hideous thing among masterpieces. He just smiled and said, 'True value rarely exists on the surface.'"
Alexander smirked, an expression of pure approval. "Eleanor’s Gallery. She is currently the board chair of the high-society philanthropic trust. And tomorrow night, she is hosting an elite art auction right in that building."
"We have to break into a gallery during a gala?" I asked, my heart rate spiking.
"Not break in," Alexander stepped forward, pulling two gold-embossed invitations from his jacket pocket. "We are walking through the front door. As guests of honor."
I looked at the invitation. My name was printed elegantly next to Alexander Sterling’s. My appearance there would be an absolute slap in the face to Ethan's mother, who had openly despised me since the divorce.
"She is going to lose her mind when she sees me," I said.
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"Let her lose it," Alexander replied, his eyes flashing with danger. "An angry target is a distracted target. You will keep her and the crowd occupied. My team will loop the security feeds. And we will get that USB drive back."
I stood up, setting the bourbon down. The fear that used to cling to me in my past had vanished, replaced by a terrifying, icy calm. "Deal. Get me a dress. I want to make sure that tomorrow night, no one in that room can take their eyes off me."
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