Chapter 5: The Extraction
By 8:00 a.m., the sun was a blinding, harsh glare reflecting off the snow outside my office window. Elias Vance sat at Kenneth’s desk, his fingers flying across the glowing keyboard of his heavily modified laptop.
“They were thorough,” Elias muttered, chewing on a matchstick. “Your brother and your husband set up a cascading shell structure. The forty million is sitting in an escrow account held by the Blackwood Syndicate, ready to trigger the foreclosure of this estate tomorrow at noon. If the money moves to Justin’s primary accounts, you lose the house, the company, everything.”
“Can you reverse the transfer?” I asked, pacing the Persian rug.
“I’ve prepped a mirrored transaction,” Elias explained, tapping the screen. “I can bounce the funds back into your private trust, bypassing Kenneth entirely. But the escrow account is locked with dual-factor biometric authentication. Specifically, a retinal scan and a thumbprint from Kenneth. Without it, the firewall holds, and Justin wins.”
“I can’t bring you his eye, Elias,” I said coldly.
Elias smirked. “I don’t need his eye. He synced the retinal scan to his phone’s facial recognition software for remote access. If you can get his phone, unlock it with his face, and get his right thumbprint on the confirmation screen, I can initiate the transfer remotely.”
I picked up my purse. “Where is his phone?”
“GPS puts it at St. Jude’s Medical Center. Probably in his personal effects bag.”
I arrived back at the hospital just before 10:00 a.m. The adrenaline pumping through my veins masked the utter exhaustion of being awake all night. I bypassed the triage desk and flashed my spousal ID to the security guard at the post-op recovery ward.
Kenneth was in Room 412.
I pushed the door open silently. The room was dark, filled with the rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor. Kenneth was lying on his back, heavily bandaged, an IV drip of morphine feeding into his arm. His face was bruised and swollen, the arrogance completely beaten out of him by the surgeon’s scalpel. Maya was nowhere to be seen.
I walked over to the small plastic bin resting on the chair. Inside were Kenneth’s clothes, his watch, and his iPhone. I slipped the phone into my pocket and approached the bed.
“Kenneth,” I whispered, leaning over him.
His eyes fluttered open, glassy and unfocused from the narcotics. When he saw me, a pathetic, weak smile formed on his lips. “Sabrina… you came back. I knew… I knew you wouldn’t leave me.”
“Of course not, darling,” I cooed softly. “I’m right here.”
I pulled his phone from my pocket and held it up to his face. The screen lit up, scanning his sluggish, half-open eyes. A small green padlock icon unlocked.
“What are you doing?” he mumbled, his brow furrowing in confusion.
“Just checking your messages for work,” I lied, my heart pounding as Elias’s custom application booted up on the screen. A prompt appeared: **Awaiting Biometric Confirmation for Transfer**.
I reached down and gently took Kenneth’s right hand. It was cold and clammy.
“Sabrina… it hurts so much,” he whimpered, tears leaking from his eyes. “I’m sorry. Maya meant nothing. I love you.”
“I know you do,” I whispered, my voice laced with venom as I firmly pressed his right thumb against the glowing scanner on the phone.
The screen flashed: **Transfer Authorized. Processing.**
I dropped his hand as if it were a diseased rat. Kenneth blinked, the fog of the morphine parting just enough for him to register the absolute disgust on my face.
“What did you just do?” he asked, panic creeping back into his groggy voice.
Before I could answer, the door to the hospital room swung wide open.
Standing in the doorway, wearing a tailored charcoal suit and a look of absolute, furious authority, was my brother, Justin. He wasn’t playing the heartbroken victim anymore. He looked like a king arriving to claim his conquered territory.
“Get away from him, Sabrina,” Justin commanded, stepping into the room and shutting the door behind him. “This doesn’t concern you anymore.”
I slipped the phone back into my pocket, the forty-million-dollar confirmation burning a hole against my thigh.
“Oh, Justin,” I smiled, a dark, terrible curve of my lips. “It concerns me more than you could possibly imagine.”
