Vane
Chapter Forty-Seven
I am in the prison infirmary when the heavy steel doors swing open.
My left eye is swollen shut, a dull, pulsing purple. My ribs are taped tight, and every breath comes in ragged, shallow hitches that taste like copper. The "Welcome Party" in General Pop had been thorough, but they hadn't finished the job. The guards had finally intervened—likely when they realized dead billionaires don't pay as well as live ones—just as Mace was going for my throat.
I expected the District Attorney to walk through those doors with a fresh set of indictments. I expected my lawyers with more soul-crushing paperwork to sign.
I didn't expect her.
Sloane is standing in the doorway. She looks different. The cheap, state-issued suit is gone, replaced by an oversized black trench coat and a look of such lethal, cold-blooded determination that the guards actually step back to let her pass. She looks like the woman I saw on the cliffs, but the soft edges have been filed down into a blade.
"Sloane," I rasp, attempting to sit up. The pain in my side is a white-hot needle through my lung. "You were supposed to be... ten thousand feet in the air. You were supposed to be safe."
"The flight was delayed," she says, her voice a flat, metallic rasp that cuts through the sterile hum of the room. She walks to the side of my cot, her eyes raking over my battered face. I see a flicker of raw agony in her expression—a crack in the mask—but she sutures it shut instantly.
"The DA has dropped all charges against you, Vane. Arthur and the board were taken into federal custody twenty minutes ago for racketeering, money laundering, and tax evasion."
I stare at her, my mind trying to process the data through the fog of painkillers. "How? The legal process for that takes years."
"I didn't use the legal process. I audited them," she says, and the word sounds like a death sentence. She reaches out, her hand hovering over mine. She doesn't touch me—not here, not in front of the security cameras—but I can feel the heat radiating off her skin. "The car is waiting. You're being released into my custody for an emergency medical furlough until the formal exoneration is processed. I've already signed for your bond."
I let out a breath, the relief so sharp it's more painful than the broken ribs. "You did it. You burned the Swiss crypto."
"I used everything you taught me," she says, her voice dropping an octave. "I didn't just find the fraud, Vane. I found the names of the politicians who were receiving the wash. The DA didn't have a choice. It was your freedom or their careers."
As we walk out of the prison gates—Sloane supporting my weight, my arm draped heavily over her shoulders—the media is waiting. The flashes are blinding, a strobe light of scandal and triumph. The questions are a roar of white noise.
But as we reach the blacked-out SUV, Sloane pauses. She turns to look at the cameras, her face a mask of absolute, terrifying power.
"Mr. Sterling has no comment," she says, her voice carrying over the crowd. "The Audit of Sterling-Vance is officially over. We are now under new management."
We get into the back of the car. The door closes with a heavy, expensive thud, silencing the world. I sink into the leather, my eyes drifting shut as the adrenaline begins to leak out of me.
"You saved me, Sloane. You breached the exit clause for a man who didn't deserve it."
"I didn't just did it for you," she whispers. Her hand finally finds mine in the dark of the backseat. She pulls my hand toward her, pressing my palm firmly against the heavy fabric of her coat, over her stomach.
I freeze. Through the layers of wool, I feel it—not a movement, but a heavy, quiet stillness that feels like the center of the universe. The variables in my head suddenly shift, recalibrating everything I thought I knew about the future.
"I did it for the baby," she says, her eyes meeting mine in the dim light of the moving car. "We have a new contract, Vane. And this one doesn't have an expiration date."
I look at her, my heart hammering against my broken ribs. The "Monster" and the "Ghost" are gone, burned away in the furnace of the last few weeks. In their place is something much more dangerous: A family with a vendetta.
"Tell me everything," I whisper.
"In the morning," she says, leaning her head against my shoulder, her hair smelling like the forest and the rain. "The markets don't open for another six hours. And for the first time in my life... I'm going to sleep."
Sloane
Four Hours Earlier
Four hours before I walk into the Rikers infirmary, I am sitting in the back of a nondescript black sedan parked in a rain-slicked alley behind the District Attorney's office.
The city around us is a blur of grey, but inside the car, the air is stagnant and heavy. Miller is shaking beside me, his expensive silk tie askew. "Sloane, this is sedition. This is witness tampering, extortion... you're going to get us both life sentences before the sun goes down."
"Miller, sit the fuck still and look like a lawyer," I snap.
I am not shaking. The morning sickness that had me over the toilet two hours ago has been replaced by a cold, crystalline focus. I am no longer an assistant fetching coffee. I am a mother defending the bloodline of her child, and I have the digital keys to the kingdom in my palm.
District Attorney Marcella Thorne steps into the alley, flanked by two bodyguards. She looks like a woman who has climbed to the top of the pile by stepping on every hand that helped her up. She wears power like a perfume—expensive and suffocating.
I roll down the window just an inch, the smell of wet asphalt and city exhaust flooding the cabin. "Get in, Marcella. We're on a schedule."
She laughs, a dry, patronizing sound. "Ms. Vance. You're a fugitive from justice. I should have you in cuffs and halfway to a processing center."
"You could," I say, sliding a tablet across the leather seat as she ducks inside. "But before you call your men, take a look at Folder 4. It's titled The Manhattan Bridge Reconstruction Fund."
Thorne's smug smile doesn't just slip; it vanishes. She picks up the tablet, her thumb hovering before she begins to scroll. As she reads, the color drains from her face until her makeup looks like a mask on a corpse.
"Vane Sterling didn't just keep records on his enemies," I whisper, my voice a serrated edge in the quiet car. "He kept records on the people who enabled his enemies. I have every offshore transaction you've made since 2018. I have the audio of you promising the Loring Corp a 'favorable outcome' in their environmental suit."
"This is blackmail," she rasps, her eyes darting toward her guards outside.
"No, Marcella. This is a private Audit," I counter. "I have already programmed a dead-man's switch. If I don't check in with my server every ninety minutes, these files are sent simultaneously to the FBI's Internal Affairs division and the New York Times."
I lean in, the scent of the rain and the cold leather surrounding us. I don't look like a victim. I look like the woman who just inherited the devil's ledger.
"You are going to release Vane Sterling. You are going to go on camera and cite 'newly discovered forensic evidence' regarding the Loring deep-fake. You are going to arrest Arthur Sterling and the board for the very tax evasion I've just highlighted for you. And in exchange, I'll delete Folder 4 and forget your name."
"You're a monster," Thorne breathes.
"I learned from the best," I reply, my eyes hard as flint. "You have sixty minutes to make the call. Or the bridge fund becomes the headline of the century."