Chapter 17 - The Trojan Horse
By midnight, my office had been transformed into a war room.
Marcus had called in his most elite cybersecurity contractors. The glass desk was buried under blueprints, tax records, and encrypted laptops. I sat at the head of the table, an empty coffee cup beside me, my eyes burning as I scanned the documents Alistair had left behind.
"He forged them," I said, my voice razor-sharp in the quiet room. "Marcus, you are a brilliant litigator, but you are a terrible criminal. You wouldn't know how to embezzle corporate funds if your life depended on it. Alistair fabricated this digital trail to make it look like we are complicit."
"It doesn't matter if they are forged," Marcus said grimly, pacing behind my chair. He looked dangerous—a lethal shadow pacing a cage. "If he hands them to a corrupt federal judge, the ensuing investigation will paralyze the Ashford Center. Our funding will plummet. The board will panic and force a vote of no confidence to remove you."
"That is exactly his play," I agreed, leaning back and rubbing my temples. "He wants to starve me out. He wants me to hand him the keys to the kingdom to avoid a media slaughter."
"I can end this," Marcus whispered, stopping beside me. His dark eyes were swirling with a violent, protective fury. "I can find out where he is staying. I can make those documents disappear. I can make him disappear."
I looked up at the man who loved me enough to burn the world down to keep me warm. It was a seductive offer. A swift, brutal end to the man who dared threaten our future.
But I placed my hand flat against his chest, feeling the frantic, heavy beat of his heart.
"No," I said softly, but with absolute conviction. "If we use violence, we become exactly what Julian and Eleanor always were. We become criminals. I didn't build an empire of light just to run back into the dark the second I get scared."
Marcus let out a ragged breath, resting his forehead against mine. "Claire, he is targeting you. He is targeting us."
"I know," I breathed, my eyes hardening into diamonds. "Which is why I am going to annihilate him legally, publicly, and permanently. I want you to pull every single offshore record tied to Croft Global Equities. We are going to find his vulnerability."
For the next forty-eight hours, we barely slept. We traced shell companies through Switzerland, the Caymans, and London. Alistair was brilliant, but arrogance always leaves a footprint.
At 3:00 AM on Thursday, I found the crack in his armor.
"Marcus," I called out, my heart hammering a triumphant rhythm.
He was by my side in a second. I pointed to a cascading series of micro-transactions on my monitor.
"Alistair claims his wealth is tied to legitimate European real estate," I explained, typing furiously to decrypt the final layer of the ledger. "But these routing numbers... they trace back to a sovereign wealth fund sanctioned by the United States government for funding international arms trafficking."
Marcus stared at the screen, the magnitude of the discovery hitting him. "He isn't a venture capitalist. He’s laundering money for a global syndicate."
"And he’s doing it on American soil," I smiled, a cold, terrifying expression. "If the federal government finds out, they won't just freeze his assets. They will lock him in a black site for treason."
"Do we call the FBI?" Marcus asked, pulling out his encrypted phone.
"Not yet," I said, standing up, smoothing my clothes. "If we just hand this over, he’ll tie it up in court for a decade with his expensive lawyers. We need to catch him in the act. We need to force him to claim the dirty money in public."
I looked at Marcus, the brilliant strategist inside me fully awakened.
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"Call Alistair," I commanded. "Tell him I am surrendering. Tell him to meet us tomorrow night at the Manhattan Philanthropic Summit. Tell him I will sign the company over to him in front of the entire city."
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