He slid down the front of the refrigerator until his rear hit the linoleum, his head lolling against the brushed steel:
*thump.*
“No…” David whimpered, tears cutting clean tracks through the grease on his face: “No, that was twenty years ago! I loved her! I stayed with her for eighteen years! I took care of her!”
“You didn’t take care of her, David,” Judge Eleanor Mercer spoke from the doorway, her gold-headed cane tapping once against the floorboards:
*tink.*
“For eighteen years, you administered synthetic peptide inhibitors into her morning coffee—the chemical compounds Angela provided from Sterling Biomedical Laboratories in Vaduz.”
“You ensured that Rebecca remained childless.”
“Because under Clause Fourteen of the **1944 Mercer Sovereign Lineal Charter**…”
Judge Mercer leaned forward, resting both hands on her cane:
“…if a sovereign custodian dies without surviving biological lineal issue, the fee-simple title to **Conduit Ten** and the sixty billion dollars in maritime defense escrows reverts by operation of law unto the surviving spouse.”
“Unto you, David.”
“The compliant husband.”
“And the moment Rebecca signed that Scottsdale power-of-attorney deed…”
Judge Mercer bared her teeth in a cold, terrifying line of white bone:
“…you and Angela were scheduled to board a private flight to Zurich, while an ‘unfortunate domestic gas leak’ leveled this house and buried my grand-niece in forty feet of smoking rubble.”
CHAPTER 5: THE DISARMAMENT OF THE HUSBAND
David let out an un-human, animalistic shriek from the bottom of his lungs:
*“ANGELA TOLD ME SHE WOULDN’T BE HURT! ANGELA PROMISED ME REBECCA WOULD BE PUT IN A RETIREMENT FACILITY IN SWITZERLAND!”*
He lunged across the linoleum, his hands clawing desperately for the drawer where we kept the kitchen carving knives:
*CLACK.*
Two two-hundred-and-twenty-pound SOG tactical operators stepped from the hallway in fluid, synchronized, terrifying mechanical velocity:
Their gloved hands caught David Collins by his canvas jacket collar and his right forearm in mid-air, spun his six-foot frame one hundred and eighty degrees against the edge of the kitchen counter, and drove his face down onto the butcher block with four hundred pounds of linear downward kinetic leverage:
*SLAM.*
His cheek struck the wood, the ceramic fruit bowl shattering into two dozen jagged pieces across the table, his water bottle rolling into the sink:
*CRACK-SMASH.*
A pair of heavy-duty, double-locking, high-security stainless-steel military transport restraints ratcheted around David Collins’s wrists with two sharp, definitive snaps that sounded like twin rifle shots across the silent house:
*SNAP.*
A second set of chains clamped around his ankles—the identical stainless-steel irons used for capital traitors at the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth:
*SNAP-CLINK.*
David wept into the butcher block, blood and tears pooling around his split lower lip:
“Rebecca… please! I’m sorry! I was in over my head! The Vances own the courts! They own the banks! They told me if I backed out, they’d throw me into the bay in concrete boots! Think of our eighteen years together! You can’t let them take me in chains!”
I walked across the kitchen.
My hand-welted leather field boots made a clean, concussive *tack… tack… tack* against the linoleum.
I stopped two inches from my husband’s bleeding face.
I did not strike his cheek.
I did not raise my voice.
I reached into my pocket, pulled out the gold wedding band I had worn for eighteen years—the band I had polished every Sunday morning while he was at church with Angela:
*SLIP.*
I dropped the heavy gold ring into the puddle of water beside his nose:
*CLINK.*
“You asked me forty-eight hours ago in this foyer, David, what I was talking about when I told you Angela had HIV,” Rebecca Collins whispered softly.
Every syllable fell like an un-appealable decree that sealed eighteen years of domestic treason into solid rock forever:
“You told me that you had to go to the pharmacy.”
I leaned down until my clear slate-gray eyes filled his entire field of vision:
“You were right about one thing, David.”
“You needed testing.”
“And tonight…”
I pointed toward Uncle David:
“…the audit has confirmed that you are completely, thoroughly bankrupt.”
“The marriage is void.”
“The check is impounded.”
“The sixty billion is secured.”
“And around here…”
I bared my teeth in a cold, terrifying line of white bone:
“…nobody ever, ever… signs an auditor’s name to a forged deed.”
CLICK-CLACK.
The two federal marshals hauled David Collins to his feet by his armpits, marching him down the center aisle of the foyer in waist-chains and leg-irons toward the armored tactical transport BearCats waiting in the rain:
*SCREEECH.*
Behind him were marched his private financial records, his encrypted burner phones, and the cashier’s check from Vaduz, sealed inside forensic evidence drums:
*CRASH-ROAR-PANT.*
The front door of our suburban house clicked shut behind them with an authoritative, airtight, pneumatic *THUD*.
