8. The Perfect Crime #2
Stepping out of the private hallway, Bastien stopped at the perimeter of the living room. He casually fastened the button on his dark suit jacket and scanned the crowd, his gaze locking onto mine through the sea of wealthy guests as he offered a sharp, confirming nod.
The safe was cracked. The job was done.
Releasing Tobias’s hand, I let my shoulders drop. I stood fully upright, pressing a hand to my forehead to play up the exhaustion, and offered the crowd a weak, apologetic smile.
“It’s passing,” I announced to the room. “The pain is gone. I’m so sorry I frightened everyone.”
Lavinia let out a dramatic sigh, dropped her cell phone back into her purse, and stepped forward to pat my shoulder.
“Thank heavens. You sit right there, darling. I’ll have the caterers bring you a plate.”
I pushed the mahogany door of the master bedroom shut. The brass deadbolt engaged with a quiet, metallic click. The party downstairs had finally ended, leaving the massive penthouse and the upstairs corridors completely silent.
I walked past the edge of the king-sized mattress and reached for the bedside table. My fingers found the switch on the lamp, flicking the bulb to life to cast a dim, yellow glow across the sheets.
Bastien stood near the window on the far side of the room. He had discarded his suit jacket somewhere, leaving him in a crisp white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His broad frame cast a long shadow across the floral wallpaper.
I turned away from the lamp, resting my palm against the carved wooden footboard.
“Did you find the ledgers?” I asked.
Bastien pivoted away from the window and ran a hand through his hair. The low, frustrated rasp in his voice echoed in the quiet space.
“I cracked the safe and locked it back up without a trace,” Bastien said. “It’s a dead end, Cecilia. There are no wire transfers. No bank routing numbers.”
My fingers tightened around the polished wood. I stared across the room at him, letting the words sink in.
“What do you mean?” I demanded. “The ransom was five million dollars. He had to move it somewhere.”
“There’s nothing,” Bastien replied, closing the distance between us until he stood at the edge of the Persian rug. “No wire transfers, no bank ledgers, no digital trail. Which means he had to have withdrawn the ransom in physical cash from the trust and handed the bags straight to his bookies.”
I squeezed the footboard harder until the smooth edge of the carving dug into my palm. Untraceable cash. No wire transfers. No digital breadcrumbs connecting my husband to the fixers who arranged my abduction.
“It’s the only way he could pay off a debt that size without leaving a trace,” Bastien continued. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but it’s not exactly an uncommon practice. I’d hoped he was arrogant enough to make a mistake, but apparently not.”
I looked down at the floorboards. Tobias used the kidnapping as a loophole to withdraw paper money from the trust, and he handed it off in the dark. The legal proof of the conspiracy did not exist.
I pressed my palms against the edge of the mattress and pushed myself upright. The plush fibers of the Persian rug brushed against my bare heels.
“Tell me you missed something,” I whispered. “A ledger. A receipt.”
Bastien remained exactly where he stood, his posture tense and unmoving. “I didn’t.”
“You only checked the wall safe,” I insisted. “There has to be another lockbox. A false bottom in a drawer.”
“I swept the study while the guests crowded you,” Bastien replied. “The safe was the only secure container in the condo. He left nothing behind.”
The blunt finality of his voice left me completely hollow. I crossed my arms and dug my fingers into the sleeves of my cashmere sweater, squeezing my ribs as the reality sank in.
Tobias arranged my abduction, terrorized me in a warehouse, and slept with my mother. He did all of this, and he still rested down the hall in silk pajamas. He got to keep the expensive furniture and the prestige because he handed over untraceable paper bills in the dark.
“She almost suffocated, we had to call our own doctor in.”
The thug’s panicked voice echoed in my head, dragging me straight back to the damp concrete. I released my right sleeve and pressed my fingers against my temple, trying to shake off the memory. It didn’t work. The smell of mildew and cheap bodega pastry invaded my nose.
I dropped my hand and wrapped my arms back around myself, hugging the cashmere tight over my bump.
I began to pace.
I paced frantically across the rug. I marched from the footboard to the closet door and back again.
The absolute quiet of the penthouse only made me angrier.
Tobias and Lavinia were likely sharing a drink downstairs, toasting their own brilliance, completely convinced they were untouchable because they paid in cash.
“So that’s it?” I demanded.
I stopped my march and glared at him.
“He just gets away with it?”
“He terrifies me, he puts my baby in danger, and he just walks away clean?”
Bastien shifted his weight, his boots planted at the edge of the rug. “The cash is gone. The withdrawal he made was legal, because the trust exists to protect you.”
I gripped the sleeve of my sweater.
“If you take this to the police now, Loxley won’t be able to do anything with it,” Bastien continued. “They will dismiss it.”
The legal system offered me nothing. The police required banking trails and digital signatures.
Tobias was too careful to leave anything behind for the police. If I handed Detective Loxley the burner phone today, my husband would face divorce court, not a prison cell. He would fight for my assets. He would demand custody of my daughter.
“I am not letting them win,” I said. “I am not spending the rest of my life looking over my shoulder wondering when they’ll try to attack me again!”
“He can’t just win,” I muttered, turning away.
I resumed my march across the rug. If the legal route was dead, I had to find a way to manipulate the trust fund guardrails myself. I needed a lawyer. I needed to trap Tobias.
I took two frantic steps toward the closet.
Bastien stepped directly into my path. He did not raise his hands. He did not reach out to touch my shoulders or restrict my movement. He simply used his size to block me, planting his boots on the rug.
I stopped mere inches from him, close enough to feel the warmth radiating off his chest.
“Take a breath, Cecilia,” Bastien said. “We’re not letting him win.”
Tobias used my panic against me, soothing me with fake promises while he paid men to take me. Bastien didn’t soften his voice or tell me to calm down. He just stood there, waiting for me to face the reality of it.
I dropped my hands from my sweater, letting my arms hang limp.
“We have nothing to leverage against them,” I argued.
I looked up, meeting his gaze. The unyielding focus in his dark eyes kept me rooted to the spot.
“Then we dig deeper,” Bastien said.
He held my gaze, his voice a low, grounded rumble in the quiet bedroom.
“If we can’t prove what he did in the past, we will find a way to break him in the present,” Bastien promised. “I gave you my word, and I don’t break it.”
I met his eyes, knowing he was exactly right.
Bastien operated in a world of violence and consequence, not legal loopholes. If Tobias was too careful to leave evidence of the kidnapping behind, we couldn’t rely on the police. We had to bait him into committing a fresh crime.
I stared up at him in the dim light, ready to do exactly that.