Chapter 9 - Unmasking the Syndicate
The rain was coming down in blinding sheets at the private executive airfield.
A sleek Gulfstream G650 sat on the tarmac, its twin jet engines whining as they began their startup sequence. The boarding stairs were still down, buffeted by the high winds.
Miles Corrigan was practically running across the tarmac, his expensive leather briefcase clutched tightly against his chest, his trench coat soaked through. He kept looking over his shoulder, his eyes wide with frantic paranoia.
"Hurry up!" Miles screamed at the pilot waiting at the foot of the stairs. "Get the flight plan cleared! We need to wheels-up in five minutes!"
"You won't be taking off tonight, Miles."
The voice came from behind the landing gear.
Miles froze, spinning around. Two massive black SUVs had entered the tarmac silently from the auxiliary hangar, their headlights cutting through the driving rain to pin him in a blinding white glare.
From the passenger side of the lead vehicle stepped Iris.
She was no longer wearing the torn banquet uniform or the oversized blazer. She wore a tailored black wool coat that brushed her calves, high leather boots, and her hair was swept back into an immaculate, severe braid. Beside her, Nicholas emerged into the downpour, a long black umbrella held effortlessly above them both.
Miles backed up against the metal steps of the plane, clutching his briefcase like a weapon. "Stay back! I'm on sovereign charter territory! You can't touch me here, Vance!"
Iris walked forward, stopping just five paces away, perfectly framed in the glare of the headlights.
"The briefcase, Miles," Iris said, her voice cutting through the roar of the jet engines with razor-sharp precision. "Drop it."
"You don't understand what you're dealing with, Iris!" Miles yelled hysterically, rain streaming down his pale face. "You think you and Nicholas run this city? The Oakhaven Syndicate owns the debt of thirty nations! Bianca was just a spoiled pawn, but this—" he tapped the briefcase "—this has the routing numbers for the offshore accounts that funded your father's murder ten years ago!"
Iris’s breath caught in her throat.
Nicholas’s entire body went rigid. The air around him seemed to drop ten degrees below freezing.
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Ten years ago, Iris’s father—the brilliant founder of the original data-security architecture that Nicholas later built his empire upon—had died in a mysterious car crash in Geneva. It was the tragedy that had originally brought Iris and Nicholas together, the shared grief that forged their unshakeable bond.
"What did you say?" Iris asked, her voice dropping into a deadly whisper that defied the howling wind.
