Chapter 6 - Cornered Rats
The federal trial for the United States of America v. Grant Lowell and Sloane Reeves was set for mid-spring, but the war between the two former lovers reached a fever pitch long before the first juror was seated.
Inside the visiting booths of the MCC Chicago, separated by two inches of scratch-resistant bulletproof glass, Sloane Reeves sat opposite her court-appointed public defender.
Her expensive highlights had grown out into jagged bands of brown. Her skin was gray, broke out in nervous hives, and her acrylic nails had been chewed down to the quick.
“He’s blaming me for everything!” Sloane shrieked through the small telephone handset. “He told the prosecutors that I set up the shell companies! That I forged his electronic signature on the foreign IP transfers!”
“Miss Reeves, calm down,” her lawyer sighed, rubbing his temples. “Mr. Lowell’s legal defense team—such as it is—has submitted twenty-four signed corporate resolutions bearing your initials. They’re claiming you held de facto operational control over the treasury and that you took advantage of his domestic distress to loot the company.”
“Domestic distress?” Sloane laughed, a wild, hysterical shriek that drew a sharp warning glance from the correctional officer standing by the door. “He beat his wife with a club! He bragged to me about it! He came straight from his penthouse to my bed at the Drake with her blood literally under his fingernails!”
“If you want a plea deal, Miss Reeves,” the public defender said bluntly, “you need something tangible. The U.S. Attorney doesn't care about his domestic battery—that’s a state charge being prosecuted separately by the Cook County DA. The feds want the one hundred and forty million dollars from the Chinese data syndicate. If you can’t deliver the cold-storage private keys, you’re looking at thirty-five years under the RICO enhancements.”
Sloane’s chest heaved. Her eyes darted wildly.
“The private keys,” she whispered.
“Yes. Do you have them?”
A sinister, venomous smile spread across Sloane’s cracked lips. “No. But I know where they are. Grant didn't trust me. He kept the hardware wallet inside his grandfather’s vintage desk at the Lowell family manor in Lake Geneva.”
“The Lake Geneva property is slated for judicial foreclosure next Tuesday,” the lawyer noted. “Whitaker Capital bought the underlying mortgage note from the regional bank yesterday.”
Sloane gripped the telephone handset until her knuckles turned translucent white.
“Then Grant is dead,” Sloane hissed. “Because I recorded him.”
The lawyer looked up, suddenly alert. “Recorded what?”
“Every single telephone conversation we had for the last twelve months,” Sloane whispered, her voice dripping with venomous triumph. “I set my personal phone to auto-record whenever his number dialed in. I have him admitting to the IP theft. I have him detailing how he planned to poison Amelia’s food with slow-acting thallium if she refused to sign the postnuptial agreement.”
Even the jaded public defender stared at her in sheer horror. “He planned to kill her?”
“He told me she had to die before the Series C funding round,” Sloane whispered, leaning against the glass. “He said if she died of an unexplained heart attack, he’d inherit the entirety of her mother’s eighty-million-dollar trust without Charles Whitaker being able to dispute the probate. He promised me we’d be married in Monaco by Christmas.”
The lawyer sat back, his pen hovering over his legal pad. “If those recordings are authentic, Miss Reeves… you won’t just get a plea deal. You might save your own life.”
Across the corridor, in another interrogation room, Grant Lowell was having a very different conversation with a junior associate from a cut-rate defense firm paid for by his remaining distant relatives.
Grant was shaking. His left eye was swollen shut from the beating he had received in the yard three days earlier. Two of his front teeth were missing.
“You have to get me into protective custody!” Grant sobbed, his voice breaking into wet wheezes. “They’re going to kill me! Victor Vance’s crew told me tonight is my last night! They know I’m testifying!”
“Mr. Lowell, the warden has denied our petition for solitary confinement,” the young attorney said nervously. “They claim you are at standard risk for a non-violent white-collar offender.”
“Non-violent?” Grant screamed, thrusting his handcuffed wrists forward. “Look at my face! Tell Charles Whitaker I will sign anything! Tell him I’ll sign a full confession to the battery! I’ll admit I hit her! I’ll admit I hit her fifty times! Just get me out of this general population block!”
The door opened.
It wasn't a guard.
Julian Sterling stepped into the small interrogation room, carrying a slim leather folder. He wore a charcoal cashmere overcoat that smelled of winter frost and immense wealth. He nodded once to the junior associate, who immediately packed his briefcase and scurried out the door without a word of protest.
Grant shrank back into his plastic chair, cowering from the taller man.
“Julian,” Grant whimpered. “Did Amelia send you? Did she see the news about what happened to me in the yard? She still cares, doesn't she? She’s punishing me, but she doesn't want me to die in here!”
Julian pulled out the chair opposite Grant and sat down. He smoothed the crease of his trousers with exquisite care.
“Amelia does not care if you live or die, Grant,” Julian said, his voice quiet, conversational, and terrifyingly cold. “To her, you are merely an accounting error that is currently being rectified.”
“Then why are you here?” Grant cried.
Julian opened the leather folder and slid a single glossy 8x10 photograph across the metal table.
It was a photograph of the Lowell family estate in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. The hundred-year-old stone mansion where Grant’s grandfather had lived, the place Grant had boasted about throughout his entire marriage as proof of his old-money lineage.
In front of the mansion stood a massive yellow excavator, its steel claw resting against the front porch.
Grant’s single open eye dilated in pure horror. “What… what is that?”
“The judicial foreclosure sale concluded forty minutes ago,” Julian said pleasantly. “There was only one bidder. Whitaker Real Estate Acquisitions.”
“No,” Grant gasped. “No! That house has been in my family for three generations! My grandfather built that estate!”
“Your grandfather was a disgraced branch manager who died in debt,” Julian corrected him smoothly. “And as of noon today, the municipal zoning board approved our application for site redevelopment. We are tearing the mansion down, Grant. Every stone. Every timber. Every polished floorboard.”
Grant lunged across the table, his chains rattling violently against the steel anchor loop. “You can’t do that! That’s my heritage! That’s my blood!”
Julian didn't even flinch. He leaned forward, his dark eyes boring into Grant’s trembling, broken face.
“We found the hardware wallet inside your grandfather’s desk, Grant,” Julian whispered.
Grant froze.
“All one hundred and forty million dollars in cryptocurrency has been seized by the Department of Justice,” Julian continued. “And Sloane Reeves has just handed the U.S. Attorney eighteen hours of audio recordings. The ones where you discussed using thallium sulfate in Amelia’s nightly tea.”
Grant’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. His face went gray, a deathly, hollow pallor creeping over his features.
“The Cook County State’s Attorney just upgraded your charges,” Julian whispered, standing up and buttoning his coat. “It is no longer aggravated battery, Grant. You are now charged with First-Degree Attempted Murder with Premeditation and Murder for Hire.”
Julian picked up his leather folder.
“In Illinois, that carries a mandatory sentence of forty-five years to life without the possibility of parole. You will never leave Stateville Correctional Center alive. You will grow old, rot, and die in an eight-by-ten cell, surrounded by men who know exactly what you did to a woman who gave you everything.”
Julian walked to the heavy steel door and knocked twice.
May you like
As the guard opened it, Grant began to wail—a high, keening, animalistic shriek of absolute, hopeless despair that echoed down the concrete hallway long after Julian had stepped out into the clean Chicago air.
***
