Chapter 4 - The Analyst
With my parents secured and flying privately to a secure location in Florida, the paralyzing fear that had gripped me for two years began to recede, replaced by a cold, unfamiliar anger.
Grant had used my love for my family as a weapon.
"I want to help," I told Adrian that afternoon, sitting across from him at the kitchen island. "You have his public files, but you don't know his internal routing systems. I do. I've watched him work from his home office. I know his password structure."
Adrian looked at me, assessing my resolve. "Evie, if you cross this line, there is no going back. We are going to dismantle his life piece by piece."
"He dismantled mine," I said, pointing to the fading purple bruises on my wrist. "Give me the laptop."
For the next eight hours, I became the financial analyst I was trained to be. I didn't need to hack into Grant's encrypted servers; I just needed to follow the digital breadcrumbs he had left in plain sight. I accessed the public tax records of his LLCs, cross-referencing them with the offshore accounts he had absentmindedly mentioned over dinner.
"Look at this," I said at 2:00 AM, pointing to a ledger on the screen. "He's skimming."
Adrian leaned over my shoulder. "Explain."
"Grant is washing money for the syndicates, yes, but he's greedy," I said, adrenaline sharp in my veins. "He's charging them a 5% management fee, but he's routing an additional 2% into a ghost account in the Cayman Islands under his mother's maiden name. He's stealing from the very cartels he's terrified of."
Adrian smiled. It was the same lethal smile I had seen in the apartment.
"Evie," Adrian said softly, "you just found the kill switch."
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"What do we do with it?"
"We don't go to the police. Grant has judges and cops on his payroll," Adrian said, closing the laptop. "We go to his clients. We let the wolves handle the snake."
