Chapter 10 - The Sovereign Ball
Miles realized he had played his final, desperate card. A twisted, triumphant grin spread across his soaked face.
"You thought it was an accident, didn't you, Iris?" Miles shouted, laughing madly against the roar of the turbines. "You thought old Marcus Miller just lost control on the icy roads of the Alps! Nicholas knows who did it. Nicholas has known for five years! Ask him why he never told you! Ask him why he kept you hidden away in Seattle while he took over your father’s code!"
Iris did not turn to look at Nicholas. She kept her eyes locked on Miles. "Open the briefcase."
"No!" Miles screamed, turning to sprint up the stairs into the cabin. "I'm leaving! And tomorrow morning, the entire world will know what your precious husband is hiding!"
Before Miles could take the third step, the cockpit lights of the Gulfstream flickered and died. The whining engines suddenly coughed, sputtered, and spun down into a low, dying whine.
The pilot stepped out from the cabin door, holding his hands up, stepping aside.
From inside the aircraft emerged Delia Ford—dressed not in a hotel supervisor uniform, but in tactical gear, carrying a high-grade military tablet that had just severed the plane's fly-by-wire avionics through a remote kill-switch.
Miles stumbled back down the stairs in utter disbelief, slipping on the wet metal and crashing hard onto the tarmac. His briefcase flew open, scattering dozens of water-resistant, encrypted flash drives and laminated financial dossiers into the puddles.
Iris walked forward calmly. She crouched down in front of the groveling man, plucked the primary black flash drive from the pooling water, and wiped it clean against her sleeve.
"You really don't know who I am, do you, Miles?" Iris said softly, leaning close so only he could hear. "My father didn't just teach me how to manage balance sheets. He taught me how to write the backdoor protocols for every sovereign financial system in the Western hemisphere."
May you like
She stood up, looking down at him with pure disdain. "Nicholas didn't hide me to protect himself. He hid me because if the world knew what I was capable of doing to people like you, they would be terrified."
Nicholas walked up beside her, placing the umbrella over her head to shield her from the storm. Two security operatives moved in like shadows, hoisting the weeping, broken Miles Corrigan to his feet and dragging him toward the idling SUVs.
