Julian was waiting under a lamp.
Martha was tied up behind him.
And beside some columns, armed men appeared.
More than twenty.
Simone stepped out from among them.
She no longer wore jewelry or a designer dress.
She wore tactical clothing.
She was holding a gun.
“So we finally meet the real Rachel Montgomery,” she said.
Julian looked at me with a mixture of hatred and desperation.
“You took everything from me.”
“Your company was built with my money.”
“It was mine!”
“Then you should have learned to hold it up without trying to murder the woman who financed it.”
He walked over to Martha and rested the wrench on her shoulder.
“Hand over the Montgomery access credentials and this all ends.”
“You have no idea what you stole, Julian.”
“I know exactly what it’s worth.”
Simone raised the gun.
“Enough.”
She aimed at my chest.
“Your pregnancy changed the timeline. Julian was supposed to keep you close until he got full access to your family’s systems. When we found out you were pregnant, you started becoming a problem.”
I held her gaze.
“That’s why the procedure.”
“That’s why all of it.”
Julian swallowed hard.
For the first time, he seemed to understand something.
“You told me you only wanted the baby out of the way.”
Simone looked at him with contempt.
“You were always a tool, Julian.”
My husband’s expression broke.
Perhaps that was his cruelest punishment.
Discovering he had done to me exactly what someone else had been doing to him for years.
Simone gave an order.
“Kill her.”
Nobody fired.
She waited.
“I said shoot.”
Silence.
Julian turned toward the men.
“What are you doing?”
One of them stepped forward.
It was the commander of the group.
He stopped in front of me.
And he lowered his weapon.
“Mrs. Montgomery. Perimeter secured.”
Simone’s eyes widened.
“What?”
The other men lowered their weapons one after another.
I had found that network long before I entered the port.
The supposed mercenaries belonged to a security firm subcontracted through several companies. A chain of companies that ended, inevitably, under Meridian’s financial control.
“Simone,” I said, “you investigate military technology, banking movements, and corporate networks. You should have learned one basic rule.”
