Chapter 5 - The Gathering of the Wolves
The tactical retreat of the Hartwell family lasted exactly twenty-four hours.
By Thursday morning, the corporate intelligence team at Wren Logistics had confirmed that Vivian Hartwell had checked into a private clinic in Lake Forest, issuing a statement through her public relations firm that she was suffering from "exhaustion" and that the wedding had been postponed due to a "private family matter."
But behind the scenes, the wolves were mobilizing.
Chloe was moved from the Michigan Avenue clinic to a secure penthouse suite inside the Wren Corporate Building on Wacker Drive—a space that sat forty floors above the city, guarded by biometric locks and a rotating team of private security guards who reported directly to Vincent.
"You need to eat something, Chloe," her sister, Sarah, said, walking into the sleek, modern living room with a plate of toast and fruit. Sarah had arrived from Michigan that morning, her face still showing the pale, drawn exhaustion of someone who had been hauled out of her bed by armed men in the middle of the night. "Your husband... I mean, Gabriel... his people have been very polite, but this feels less like a penthouse and more like a very expensive cage."
"He’s not my husband, Sarah," Chloe said, sitting on the leather sofa with a heating pad pressed against her left ribs. "He’s the man who broke my heart three years ago so he could save his father’s ships."
"Well, he’s currently spending four million dollars an hour to keep the Swiss banks from calling in his loans," Sarah said, sitting down beside her. "My husband spent the morning looking over the corporate filings Gabriel’s legal team sent us. Chloe... the Wren line is completely exposed. If Arthur Hartwell convinces the Baltic shipping board to revoke Gabriel’s docking rights in Hamburg, the whole company collapses by Monday."
Before Chloe could reply, the television screen mounted on the wall switched automatically from the news channel to a private, closed-circuit video feed.
Gabriel was sitting in his office on the floor below, his tie undone, the desk behind him covered in a chaotic mountain of spreadsheets, legal briefs, and empty coffee cups. Beside him stood Vincent, holding a heavy black folder with a red security seal across the latch.
"Chloe," Gabriel’s voice came through the high-definition speakers, clear and crisp. "Arthur just called an emergency meeting of the Lake Michigan Port Authority for nine o'clock tomorrow morning. He’s going to introduce a motion to have our domestic shipping certificates suspended based on a 'security violation' he’s manufactured at our South Side terminal."
Chloe stood up from the sofa, her ribs aching as she moved closer to the screen. "What kind of violation, Gabriel?"
"He had one of his crews plant three crates of unregistered automatic weapons inside our automated logistics bay last night," Gabriel said, his face cast in the cold, green light of his computer monitor. "He’s going to bring the federal inspectors in tomorrow morning to 'discover' them. If the certificates are suspended, the Swiss banks don't even have to wait for the first of the month—they can seize the fleet immediately under the anti-terrorism compliance clauses."
"Then show them the Riga manifests!" Chloe cried out. "Show them what Vivian did! That proves the Hartwells are the ones moving contraband!"
"The Riga manifests only prove civil customs fraud, Chloe," Gabriel said, his gray eyes locking onto the camera lens as if he could see her through the screen. "They don't prove who put the weapons in the South Side terminal last night. Arthur has the terminal manager on his payroll. The surveillance logs for the last twelve hours have already been wiped."
He leaned back in his chair, rubbing his temples with his fingers. "I need a witness who can place Vivian’s personal security team inside that terminal last night. Someone who knows their vehicle registrations, someone who can prove the logs were altered from an outside server."
Chloe looked down at her hands, her mind racing through the thousands of pages of corporate audits she had done for the Hartwell network before Vivian had pushed her down the stairs.
"The secondary server," she whispered, her head snapping up. "Vivian doesn't use the main terminal network for her private security logs. She uses a mirror server hosted by a shell company in Delaware called Aegis Shipping. I found the routing numbers six months ago when I was checking their tax allocations. Gabriel... if they wiped the main terminal logs, the mirror server in Delaware still holds the original entries for twenty-four hours before the automatic overwrite."
May you like
Gabriel went perfectly still on the screen. He looked up at Vincent, his gray eyes turning cold and sharp. "Vincent. Call our team in Wilmington. Tell them I want the mirror logs for Aegis Shipping before the markets open in New York."
He looked back at the camera, a small, dark smile finally breaking through the exhaustion on his face. "Hold on, Chloe. We’re about to take their teeth."
