Chapter 8 - Stripped Bare
By Thursday morning, the federal dragnet closed with suffocating speed.
Lila Monroe sat in an interrogation room at the Federal Plaza, her makeup completely gone, her eyes hollow, and her nails chewed down to the quick. Across the steel table sat Eleanor Vance and two Assistant U.S. Attorneys.
On the table between them lay a mountain of evidence: wire transfer receipts, hotel security footage showing her rendezvous with Marcus Alden’s Singapore liaison at the Marina Bay Sands, and the complete contents of Camden's hardware ledger.
"I cooperated!" Lila screamed, her voice cracking. "I gave Vivian the combination to the hangar safe! She promised me she wouldn't press charges!"
"Ms. Alden made no such promise," Eleanor Vance replied, her voice cool and crisp as she adjusted her glasses. "She promised she would *consider* mercy. But unfortunately for you, Miss Monroe, the United States Government does not take orders from private citizens. You acted as an unregistered foreign agent in a corporate espionage scheme exceeding one hundred million dollars."
Lila collapsed forward onto the table, sobbing so hard her shoulders convulsed. "I don't have anything left! They took the jewelry! They seized the apartment in Miami! The government took my Instagram account! What am I supposed to do?!"
"You're going to plead guilty, Miss Monroe," the federal prosecutor stated without an ounce of sympathy. "And you are going to testify against Marcus Alden in open court. If you do, you might see daylight before your forty-fifth birthday."
Across town, outside the federal courthouse, the media gathered in a feeding frenzy as Camden Pierce was led down the courthouse steps in an orange jumpsuit, his wrists and ankles shackled, surrounded by six armed federal marshals.
The man who had once swaggered through private aviation hangars, bragging about his vintage car collection and sipping fifty-year-old cognac, was now staring blankly at the pavement, his head shaved, his spirit entirely broken.
When a reporter shoved a microphone forward, shouting, "Camden! Do you have a message for Vivian Alden?", Camden didn't even raise his head. He merely whispered, "She destroyed me," before being pushed into the back of the armored corrections van.
Sitting in the back of my Maybach, watching the live news broadcast on my mounted tablet, I felt no sorrow. I felt no hollow triumph. I felt only the cold, crystalline satisfaction of a balance sheet finally reconciled.
The cancer had been excised. Camden Pierce was erased from the Alden legacy.
"That takes care of the domestic front," Julian’s voice broke through the silence. He was sitting beside me, reviewing a live financial terminal on his laptop. "Camden is facing twenty-five years. Lila will take a plea deal for seven. But Marcus is not going down without lighting the entire house on fire."
"What has he done?" I asked, turning toward him.
Julian turned the screen toward me. The red charts were cascading like blood down a wall.
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"He just dumped forty million shares of Alden Global Logistics on the Hong Kong exchange. He's trying to crash our parent company's market cap before New York opens tomorrow."
***
