Chapter 4 - The Billionaire’s Wrath
Three blocks away, sitting comfortably in the leather driver’s seat of his silver sedan, Derek Bennett checked his diamond wristwatch. It had been nearly an hour since he locked the vault. By now, core body temperature would have plummeted past the point of no return. Hypothermia would have induced unconsciousness long ago, followed peacefully by cardiac arrest.
He smiled, reaching out to turn up the car radio. He was already mentally calculating how to spend the two million dollar insurance payout—paying off his aggressive loan sharks in downtown Chicago, booking a first-class ticket to the Cayman Islands, and playing the grieving, heartbroken widower for the local media cameras.
His phone buzzed against the center console.
Derek glanced at the screen, expecting an automated alert from his security system. Instead, it was an incoming call from an unknown, restricted international number.
Frowning, Derek swiped to answer, pressing the phone to his ear. “Hello?”
“You always were remarkably sloppy with your geometry, Derek,” a smooth, chillingly familiar voice echoed through the car speakers.
Derek froze. The blood drained from his face so fast he felt dizzy. That voice—he hadn’t heard it in seven years, but it haunted his nightmares like a phantom bell.
“Wh-Who is this?” Derek stammered, his fingers tightening convulsively around the steering wheel.
“Seven years ago, you thought you successfully buried Alistair Sterling,” the voice replied, dripping with lethal calm. “You stole my code, you ruined my company, and you pushed my sister over the edge. But you made one critical miscalculation, Derek. You left me alive.”
Derek’s breath caught in his throat. “Alistair… no. That’s impossible. You were ruined!”
“I was forged in the fire you built,” Alistair said softly. “And tonight, you made a catastrophic new error. You tried to murder an innocent woman and her unborn children in a facility located three buildings away from my primary global data fortress.”
Derek’s heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. “What are you talking about? How do you—?”
“Right now, my private tactical team is standing inside your precious distribution warehouse,” Alistair interrupted, his voice turning ice-cold. “They are currently cutting through the reinforced steel door of your deep freeze. And let me assure you, Derek, when they pull Grace and her babies out of that ice alive, I am going to personally ensure that every federal penitentiary in this country becomes your permanent home for the rest of your miserable life.”
“You’re bluffing!” Derek screamed, panic overriding his sanity as he threw the car into drive. “You can’t breach that vault! It’s military-grade!”
“Nothing built by human hands can withstand the wrath of a man who has waited seven years for justice,” Alistair replied coldly.
Click. The line went dead.
Derek slammed his foot down on the gas pedal, spinning his tires across the wet asphalt as his silver sedan rocketed out of the parking lot toward the warehouse, desperate to flee before the police and Alistair’s private enforcers intercepted him. But as he rounded the corner of the industrial park, his path was abruptly blocked by three massive black tactical SUVs that slammed their brakes, boxing his car completely in against a concrete barrier.
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Heavy doors flew open. Armed men in matte-black tactical gear swarmed his vehicle, shattering his driver-side window with a specialized glass-breaker before Derek could even reach for the door handle. Strong, unforgiving hands grabbed him by the collar, dragging him out of the car and slamming him face-first onto the cold asphalt.
As a heavy combat boot pressed firmly against the back of his neck, Derek stared up in absolute horror as a sleek, custom-tailored black Maybach glided silently to a halt beside him. The rear door opened, and Alistair Sterling stepped out into the rain, his obsidian eyes fixed on Derek with the cold, unblinking focus of an executioner.
