Chapter 5 - THE DEVIL'S BARGAIN
Being out on bail felt like a different kind of prison. I lived in a cheap motel in Queens, spending my days going over mountains of digital code with Arthur and a team of cyber-security experts paid for from a trust Claire had managed to shield. The humiliation of having my betrayed wife fund my defense was a bitter pill, but I swallowed it daily.
We discovered Vanessa wasn't her real name. She was part of a highly sophisticated Eastern European syndicate that targeted vulnerable executives. They profiled me perfectly: a new father feeling neglected at home, possessing high-level security clearance, with an ego large enough to blind him to red flags.
Claire and I operated in a strictly professional capacity. We met in sterile conference rooms. She never asked how I was doing, and I never dared to cross the boundary she had drawn. But one late Tuesday night, as we were pouring over offshore banking structures, her phone lit up with a video baby monitor alert.
For two seconds, I saw Noah. He was bigger, sitting up, chewing on a plastic ring. My heart physically ached, a deep, hollow pain in my chest.
Claire quickly turned the phone away. "Don't," she warned.
"He got so big," I whispered, my voice cracking. "I missed his first time sitting up."
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"You chose to miss it," she corrected without looking at me. "Focus on the Cayman accounts, David."
We found the mistake that night. Vanessa's team had meticulously covered their tracks, but they had routed one payment through a shell company that paid for the Tribeca apartment's utilities—under the name of a known associate of the syndicate currently operating in Boston. We finally had a thread to pull.
