Page 60 of Make Them Pay

“Serafina Delacroix.”

“I assume I’m surrounded.”

“Yes.”

She glances at the front doors, the hallway, the elevator she just used. Running the numbers. Three ways out. All of them covered. The security guard at the front desk has noticed two people standing in the middle of his lobby with more tension than a normal conversation, and he’s trying to decide whether to step in.

“Your financial network has been documented and sent to the federal authorities,” I tell her. “The freeze orders are already being processed. The wire transfer you’re here to authorize has a ten-minute delay on it. In about eight of those minutes, FBI agents will walk through that front door based on information from an undercover asset who spent eighteen months inside your organization.”

I watch each piece of information land. The money network. The freeze. The delay. The FBI. Orchid.

Her face doesn’t crack. But something shifts behind her eyes, like a building realizing the foundation has a problem it can’t ignore.

“The evidence package,” she says. “The one that mapped everything. That was thorough. Too thorough for your profile. You had help.”

“I had a partner.”

“The sister. Poe’s sister. The one I had in a container.” She says it like a chess player admitting she underestimated a piece. “I should’ve killed her.”

“You shouldn’t have taken her at all.”

“Perhaps.” She studies me for a second. “You’re not going to hurt me.”

“No.”

“That’s what makes you weak.”

I don’t flinch. I know that’s the reaction she wants. Instead I simply smile. “No, it makes me smart.”

“You think you’re smart.” She tilts her head slightly. “I studied you after the warehouse. You think you’re smart, but I’ve already prepared for this exact scenario.”

“Doubtful.”

She’s trying to buy her time. Trying to think of a new plan. Well, she can’t. We’ve got her.

“Enley,” I say into the radio. “Release the delay.”

“Releasing.”

The transfer goes through. Three hundred thousand dollars moves from Havenridge to the Caymans. Serafina’s phone buzzes with the confirmation. She looks down at the screen, then back at me.

“You let it go through,” she says, confused for the first time. I’m sure she never prepared for that.

“The money will be frozen within the hour along with everything else in your name. Letting the transfer finish changes nothing except giving the prosecutors one more charge—international wire fraud on top of everything else they’re already building.”

“You let me finish it so you could add charges.”

“My partner let you finish it so she could add charges.”

Through the earpiece I hear Enley’s breathing. Steady. Controlled. The sound of a woman who just turned a wire transfer into a federal charge without ever leaving her seat.

The front doors open. Two people in dark suits with the unmistakable posture of federal agents walk into the lobby. Orchid’s handlers. Right on time.

Serafina sees them. She looks at the agents, then at me, then at the phone showing the confirmation that just became more evidence.

“Dean Maddox destroyed my life,” she says quietly. “Eleven years ago. In a warehouse in the Horn of Africa. He doesn’t even know my name.”

“He knows now.”