Thirty-Two Million Reasons

Gabriel rested the barrel of his gun against the back of Liam’s neck. Liam flinched, his bloody knuckles digging into the tape binding his wrists to the wooden chair.

“Thirty-two million,” Gabriel said, tapping the screen of the open laptop on the green felt table. “Four million for my trouble. You know how to clear the foreign escrow, Tessa. Do it now.”

Tessa pulled the chair in and flattened her cuffs against her wrists. Across the table, two guards held Victor at gunpoint against the wood-paneled wall. Victor did not look at the guns. His eyes stayed locked on Gabriel, flat and cold.

“The books were built around twenty-eight,” Tessa said. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard. “An extra four million from the casino pool hits an internal audit flag before it clears the clearinghouse. You know that.”

“Rourke has the port authority signed off,” Gabriel said. He curled a thin smile, but the muscle in his jaw twitched. “No one audits an exit.”

“You never intended to run,” she said, typing in the primary ledger routing strings. “You set Rourke up to take the fall on the shell vendors, then planned to liquidate the whole wire through Cayman accounts.”

Gabriel’s hand tightened on Liam’s collar, jerking her brother’s head back. Liam gasped, his eyes wide and fixed on her.

“Two minutes,” Gabriel said. “Then I put one through his knee.”

Victor spoke from the wall, his voice level. “Look at the screen, Tessa.”

She met Victor’s gaze for a second. A single nod from him, sharp and slight. He had seen the terminal software in the tower before the fire; he understood the trapdoor she had spotted.

She rerouted the destination string away from the offshore shell, pointing the money straight into the federal compliance portal Detective Ellis had opened three hours ago. The transfer would look valid on the screen until the fraud alert hit the main network.

“Almost done,” she said. Her hands stayed steady.

The prompt for the secondary release phrase flashed yellow against the dark background.

ENTER OVERRIDE PHRASE.

Gabriel stepped around Liam, leaning close enough that she smelled stale cologne and sour sweat. He stared down at the screen. “What is that?”

“Victor’s administrative failsafe,” she said. “Without it, the wire halts.”

Gabriel glared across the table. Victor did not move a muscle.

Tessa pressed her thumb to the spacebar, then typed twelve characters: dance with me.

She hit Enter.

The monitor flickered red, and a single high tone cut through the room.

Gabriel reached for the keyboard. “What did you—”

The breaker tripped in the hall. The room went pitch-black.