Chapter 98 - The Severed Arteries
From outside, the piercing wail of multiple sirens suddenly ripped through the morning fog.
Red and blue emergency lights strobed violently against the high stained-glass windows of the Lake Forest mansion.
"Federal agents! Drop your weapons and hit the ground!" a booming loudspeaker echoed from the driveway, accompanied by the thunderous slamming of armored doors and the barking of tactical units.
Thomas froze beneath me, his chest heaving, his face pale and smeared with soot and blood. The sound of flashbangs detonated in the front courtyard as the FBI SWAT teams breached the perimeter, subduing Thomas’s private contractors within seconds.
"How?" Thomas gasped, staring up at me in disbelief. "The LaSalle dead-man switch... you didn't trigger it."
"I didn't have to," Clara’s voice rang out from the archway. She stood with her weapon securely holstered, holding up her tactical radio. Her hair was disheveled, but her eyes were gleaming with cold triumph. "I notified the Chicago field office of the IRS Criminal Investigation division four hours ago, Thomas. Julian’s dead-man switch was the contingency. My team was the protocol."
Heavy tactical boots battered down the front doors. "FBI! Nobody move!"
A dozen heavily armed federal agents flooded the foyer, laser sights crisscrossing the smoke-filled air.
Within minutes, the room was secured. Tactical medics moved in immediately, treating the wounded guards. Eleanor, weeping uncontrollably and babbling incoherently about society luncheons and stolen trusts, was hauled off the floor in handcuffs, her emerald gown ruined.
Thomas Vance was pulled up from beneath me, heavy steel cuffs snapping around his wrists. As the agents pushed him toward the door, he looked back at me one last time—the grand patriarch stripped down to an aging, pathetic felon heading toward a supermax penitentiary for kidnapping, wire fraud, and thirty years of organized racketeering.
"Julian," he whispered, a desperate plea creeping into his voice. "The Geneva accounts... without my authorization, ninety million dollars is lost forever..."
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"It’s not lost, Thomas," I said, wiping blood from my split lip. "It’s going back to its rightful owner."
He was shoved out the door into the flashing lights, his walking stick left abandoned, shattered among the debris on the foyer floor.
