Chapter 9 - The Billion-Dollar Sabotage
The fallout from the council hearing was immediate and brutal. Headlines across the country painted Avery as a desperate, unhinged woman who had hallucinated a grand conspiracy to justify her public breakdown. The Sterling PR machine was working in perfect harmony, utilizing every major news outlet to erase the truth of the rezoning scandal and replace it with a narrative of marital instability and psychiatric instability.
“They’ve frozen my bank accounts, Elena,” Avery said, staring at her phone screen in the dim light of their Brooklyn base. “Every single one. They’ve even blocked my credit cards.”
“That was expected,” Elena muttered, not looking up from her monitors. “They’re trying to cut your legs out from under you. If you can’t pay, you can’t fight. But I’ve got something better. I’ve been tracking the offshore accounts that Marcus Thorne mentioned. It’s not just bank transfers. It’s a network of crypto-wallets being used to funnel money through the dark web.”
Avery sat up, her interest piqued. “What kind of money?”
“Dirty money,” Elena replied, her eyes widening. “We’re talking human trafficking, illegal weapons trade, the whole nine yards. Victoria isn't just a corporate shark; she’s running a shadow criminal empire that makes the Sterling financial legacy look like a piggy bank. If we can link this back to her, we don’t just expose her; we bury her.”
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“How do we get the keys to those wallets?” Avery asked.
“We don’t,” Elena said, a smirk playing on her lips. “We don’t need the keys if we can just trigger a massive dump of the transactions directly to the SEC and the FBI. I just need a way to get past their firewall.”
