Chapter 4 - THE CHICAGO CONNECTION
The words on the stationery made the room spin. My company? My partner? Marcus had been my best friend and business partner for a decade. We built Miller & Co. Construction from the ground up. We were currently expanding into the Florida market, bidding on massive luxury resort contracts.
I grabbed Sarah’s laptop from beneath the ruined sofa—miraculously intact—and plugged in the USB drive. It was password protected. I tried her birthday, her mother’s maiden name, our old anniversary. Nothing worked. Then, thinking of our conversation at the bar, I typed the name of the dog we almost adopted. Buster.
The drive unlocked.
Rows of spreadsheets filled the screen. It was a shadow ledger. Millions of dollars were being funneled through shell corporations in the Caymans, directly into Miller & Co.’s Florida expansion accounts. It was a massive, highly sophisticated money-laundering operation for a cartel operating out of Miami. And sitting right at the top of the approval signatures was Marcus’s name.
Sarah’s hospitality group was managing the properties we were building. She had found the discrepancies. She had realized my company was being used to wash dirty money, and when she dug deeper, she realized Marcus was the architect. She had stolen the ledger to protect me, to find a way to expose Marcus without destroying my life.
And for that, Marcus’s cartel associates had hunted her down. The first stab wound—the blood on the hotel sheets—was a warning. She had spent the night with me to silently say goodbye, believing she was going to die.
A heavy knock at the apartment door shattered the silence.
“Mr. Miller,” a gruff voice called out. “Miami PD. We know you’re in there.”
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I quickly yanked the USB drive, shoved it into my shoe, and closed the laptop. If Marcus’s reach extended into the Miami underworld, I had no idea who I could trust. I opened the door to find two plainclothes detectives. They didn't look like standard police. Their eyes were too cold, their posture too aggressive.
“We need you to come with us to answer some questions about your ex-wife,” the taller one said, his hand resting conspicuously on his holstered weapon.
