CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO JACK

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

J ACK

Jack rubs his eyes after refreshing the client account dashboard. The balances are still the same. When he spoke with Makayla, he couldn’t bring himself to tell her about the FBI’s suspicions—that she’d lost her memory like her mother. He didn’t bring up the possible connection with his work, either, telling Makayla only that they were gathering information. She was already so beside herself, obviously crying.

He pictures her alone on the plane, with Liam missing. I should’ve gone with her. Instead, he stayed back to appease Lionel. The man to whom, until earlier this week, Jack thought he owed everything.

He eyes the empty whiskey glass in the sink that he’d downed before going to sleep, when there hadn’t seemed anything worse than to be facing a lifelong prison sentence if he went down for Lionel’s fraud.

All these years he believed Lionel was looking out for him. Mentoring him. A second father. In actuality, he’d been covering himself if the firm were ever investigated, setting Jack up to look guilty of the biggest Ponzi scheme of the decade.

Jack recalls Lionel teaching him how to change a tire when he was fifteen, and showing up at Jack’s high school graduation when his own father didn’t make it. He stares at the account balances. All this time, he hadn’t really known Lionel at all.

How could I never have known? Not even suspected.

He wonders if Sabrina knows. A memory of her hair blowing in the wind as they rode the ferry to Governors Island on a summer Saturday while they were in high school flashes in his mind. When they were still best friends. Before everything changed.

Jack wishes they hadn’t dated in college. Their friendship was never the same after that.

Jack tilts his head toward the living room window and stares at the lit-up skyline of Jersey City across the river. This very condo was purchased with the help of stolen money—money that Jack was stupid enough to believe he’d earned. Lionel’s threat after Jack told Lionel he was turning him in rings in his ears. No one’s going to believe you. They were your accounts, Jack. Every single withdrawal was done using your log-in code. If you breathe a word of this to the authorities, you’ll be the one they find guilty.

If Lionel gets caught, he’ll be facing life imprisonment. Jack contemplates the possibility that Lionel had Liam kidnapped so he could blame the account deficits on a ransom. He knew Makayla was flying home tonight with Liam. It seems unfathomable to consider it, but it’s also unfathomable to think that all these years, Lionel has been committing the biggest Ponzi scheme since Bernie Madoff. Hell, Lionel could even be planning to make it look like Jack set up the kidnapping himself—just like Lionel did with the fraudulent account transfers. He could claim Jack had given into a kidnapper’s threat that they’d kill Liam if anyone went to the police, then embezzled the funds to get his son back.

The more Jack considers this, it doesn’t make sense. If the FBI investigates the firm’s accounts, they’ll see that no ransom has been made. More likely, the Feds would find the evidence of Lionel’s years of embezzlement.

Jack sits tall. How could he not have thought of it before? Through the firm, he carried a kidnap-and-ransom insurance policy for himself and his family. Lionel helped Jack take out the policy after Jack’s Forbes article came out, getting him a corporate rate on the insurance premiums. At the time, Jack didn’t think it was necessary, but Lionel insisted on Jack getting the policy as a precaution. You can never be too careful, Lionel said.

Jack was the beneficiary, however, not Lionel. He should’ve told the FBI. He reaches for his phone, then stops. Telling the FBI about the insurance policy will only make him look guilty.

He studies his account balances on his laptop screen. Could Lionel have taken out his own insurance policy on Liam?

If Lionel was consumed enough by greed to steal hundreds of millions—possibly more—from those who trusted him, how far would he go to keep from losing everything?

But how would his boss orchestrate Liam’s kidnapping from New York? Although, for enough money, it wouldn’t be hard to find someone willing to kidnap an infant, especially if Lionel’s plan was to allow Liam to be found once an insurance payout went through.

But if Liam is somewhere on that plane in the hands of a stranger, then why can’t anyone find him? He refuses to entertain the most obvious reason why Liam wouldn’t be making any noise.

Jack straightens, pressing his bare back against the kitchen barstool while he checks his phone screen. Makayla still hasn’t called him back. The FBI’s questions about Makayla’s memory—and her mother—float in the front of his mind. Maybe they were grasping at straws. They couldn’t possibly have a legitimate reason to think Makayla wasn’t in her right frame of mind.

When Makayla’s mom was diagnosed with amnesia after she died, Makayla told him all about the memory disorder. She said it was rare and mostly affected people over fifty. Makayla isn’t even forty. Lydia suffered from migraines, which Makayla later learned had put her mom at a higher risk of developing this type of amnesia.

Now, Jack regrets telling the FBI about Makayla’s headaches. It doesn’t mean Makayla has amnesia. And if the FBI blames Liam’s disappearance on Makayla’s memory, thinking he was never on board, they could be searching for him on the ground rather than on that flight. Which was exactly what she said right before they hung up. The crew even questioned whether I brought Liam on board.

Terror grips him as if someone has reached inside and squeezed his heart. He can’t just sit here and do nothing.

He slides off the stool in search of the business card the FBI agent gave him. He should’ve told the FBI about Lionel when they were here. Jack’s silence has already caused them to lose precious time. A stab of guilt seizes his heart. He was so worried about Lionel’s threat of framing Jack for fraud that he forgot that it doesn’t matter what happens to him. All that matters is Liam.

Lionel’s last words before Jack left his office haunt him as he spots the business card on the couch. Take five million from some of your other clients’ accounts to make up for the loss in Malcolm Zeller’s. Aside from you and me, no one will ever be the wiser. Lionel patted Jack on the back as he had countless times throughout Jack’s life. Everything’s going to be fine, son.

But Jack hadn’t complied. Is Liam’s disappearance Lionel’s way of taking matters into his own hands? Jack’s chest tightens at the possibility.

Taking the business card in his hand, he thinks about Sabrina. Lionel never answered Jack’s question about whether his daughter knew about the fraud. Lionel made her the firm’s managing director at its inception; she and her father have always been extremely close.

After what happened between him and Sabrina eight years ago, Sabrina is the one Jack would’ve thought capable of fraud. Now Jack wonders if her selfish ambition and lack of moral backbone were handed down and the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

Sabrina would likely rather die than go to prison. She’s always detested Makayla. And Sabrina still holds a grudge for what happened between Jack and her all those years ago.

If ads affect your reading experience, click here to remove ads on this page.