Chapter 5 - The Trap is Set
The silence in the grand living room felt deafening. The rushing sound of the Hudson River outside the massive picture windows seemed to echo the turbulent thoughts crashing against my skull.
Frame me. Send me to federal prison. Take my daughter away and leave her with strangers while he sailed off to the Cayman Islands with his stolen millions and his new life.
The man I had loved. The man I had wept over for four agonizing years.
"He wouldn't," I whispered, the denial tasting bitter and hollow on my tongue even as I spoke the words. "He couldn't be that cruel. He loved Lily before she was even born."
"People desperate to save their own skin lose the capacity for anything resembling love, Clara," Dominic said, his voice hard, lacking any trace of pity, yet laced with a strange, fierce undercurrent of protection. "I’ve seen men sell their own brothers for a lighter prison sentence. Julian Vance is no different."
I walked over to the floor-to-ceiling window, staring out at the mist rising off the river. My hands shook as I gripped the wooden window frame. Every instinct I had honed as an ER nurse—stay calm, assess the trauma, stabilize the patient—screamed at me to run, to hide, to pack our bags and flee to Canada. But where could we go? Julian had financial resources, federal connections, and the reach of a desperate criminal backed into a corner.
"What do you want from me, Dominic?" I asked quietly, turning around to face him. "If Julian is meeting with the prosecutor tonight to hand over a fabricated case against me, hiding out in this estate isn't going to save us forever. Sooner or later, a federal judge will sign a warrant, and your men won't be able to stop them without starting a war."
Dominic walked slowly across the room toward me, stopping just inches away. Up close, I could see the subtle flecks of amber in his dark eyes, framed by thick, eyelashes and skin weathered by a life lived on the razor's edge of power and danger.
"We aren't going to hide, Clara," Dominic said softly, his voice dropping into a dangerous, confident purr. "We're going to crash his meeting."
I stared at him, incredulous. "Crash his meeting? With a federal prosecutor? Are you out of your mind? That's a federal offense!"
"Only if we get caught," Dominic replied with the ghost of a smirk. "Julian thinks he’s holding all the cards. He thinks his dead wife is safely buried in the paperwork he prepared for the government. What do you suppose the prosecutor will do when the ghost he's talking to walks through the restaurant door holding her five-year-old daughter's hand—and a signed, un-redcorded flash drive containing Julian's actual voice admitting to the fraud?"
My breath hitched. "A flash drive? What flash drive?"
Dominic reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, black USB stick, holding it up between his thumb and forefinger.
"When Julian faked his death four years ago, he forgot to wipe the cloud server connected to his home office computer," Dominic said smoothly. "My tech team retrieved it this morning. Every recorded phone call between Julian and his offshore co-conspirators. Every admission of guilt. Every instruction on how to hide the money behind fake medical charities."
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He stepped closer, his gaze burning into mine with an intensity that made my knees weak.
"Are you ready to face your husband, Clara? Are you ready to take back your life?"
