Chapter 6: The Extortion Play
Chapter 6: The Extortion Play
The leased luxury apartment, which just twenty-four hours ago had felt like Vanessa’s permanent castle, now felt like a very expensive trap.
Pacing across the white oak floors of the living room, Vanessa chewed violently on her thumbnail. Her phone was completely silent. Nathan had blocked her number. His personal assistant had blocked her number. Even the private security gate at the Miller estate had her name flagged. She was entirely cut off from the golden goose.
She stopped pacing and looked at her reflection in the floor-to-ceiling mirror of the dining room. The floral sundress was gone, replaced by an oversized cashmere sweater and black leggings. Without the silicone belly, she looked disturbingly normal, her slender frame a stark reminder of her complete failure.
But Vanessa—born Valerie Vance—had not survived in the world of high-stakes grifting by rolling over when a mark pushed back. If the gentle, pregnant victim routine was dead, it was time to play the aggressive survivor.
She picked up her phone and dialed a number she hadn't used in three years.
"Richard Sterling's office," a receptionist answered.
"Put him on. It's Valerie."
A moment later, a slick, baritone voice came through the speaker. Richard Sterling was a bottom-feeding attorney with a corner office, a man who specialized in making ugly problems disappear for a generous cut of the blackmail.
"Valerie," Sterling purred. "I thought you were comfortably retired in Chicago. Playing house with a tech CEO."
"The house burned down, Richard," Vanessa said, her voice dripping with venom. "I need you to draft a demand letter. Today. I want two million dollars transferred to my offshore trust by Friday, or I go to the press."
"Two million?" Sterling chuckled. "What exactly is our leverage? He caught you with another man? He has hidden assets?"
"I faked a pregnancy for six months," she said flatly.
The line went dead silent for a long moment. "Valerie, that is fraud. If we send a demand letter based on that, they'll have the FBI at your door before dinner."
"Not if we control the narrative," Vanessa countered, her mind working at a furious pace. "Nathan Miller is the CEO of a publicly traded logistics company. His board of directors is hyper-sensitive to scandal. You draft a letter stating that I was pregnant. Claim that when Nathan realized the divorce with his wife would cost him his shares, he emotionally and psychologically terrorized me into terminating the pregnancy at a shady underground clinic. Claim the trauma was so severe I suffered a psychological break, leading to a hysterical phantom pregnancy, complete with a prosthetic."
Sterling let out a low whistle. "A forced abortion and extreme emotional abuse. The media would crucify him. The #MeToo crowd would have his head on a spike. It's completely unhinged, Valerie."
"It's brilliant," she corrected. "It explains the prosthetic. It paints him as a controlling monster. And a two-million-dollar NDA is a lot cheaper for his company than a fifty percent drop in stock price. Draft the letter. Send it to his corporate counsel."
By noon the next day, the demand letter had detonated inside the boardroom of Miller Logistics like a fragmentation grenade.
Nathan sat at the head of the long glass table in his downtown corporate headquarters, looking like a ghost. His lead corporate counsel, a sharp-featured woman named Diane, tossed the heavy, watermarked envelope onto the table.
"It's a textbook extortion play, Nathan," Diane said, pinching the bridge of her nose. "But it is an incredibly dangerous one. If she leaks this draft press release to The Chicago Tribune or Gawker, we will have a PR catastrophe by midnight. The board will suspend you pending an investigation. Shareholders will panic."
Nathan buried his face in his hands. The sheer exhaustion was breaking him down. He hadn't slept in two days. The loss of his wife, his home, and his reputation was a crushing physical weight.
"Just pay it," Nathan whispered, his voice muffled by his hands.
"Excuse me?" Diane asked.
Nathan looked up, his eyes bloodshot and defeated. "Pay her the two million. Liquidate my personal stock options, draft the strictest non-disclosure agreement on the planet, and wire her the money. I just want her gone. I want this nightmare to end."
"You sign that agreement, and you are basically admitting guilt in the eyes of anyone who ever sees the paper trail," a voice interrupted from the doorway.
Ethan walked into the boardroom, completely ignoring the security guard trailing nervously behind him. He wore the same faded denim jacket, carrying a battered leather messenger bag.
"Ethan, you shouldn't be here," Nathan sighed. "This is a corporate matter now."
"This is a family matter," Ethan corrected, dropping his bag onto the glass table. "You pay her two million dollars, you fund her next con. You validate everything she did to you and Sarah. Diane, how long do we have before her deadline?"
Diane checked the letter. "Friday at 5:00 PM. That gives us exactly forty-eight hours."
Ethan nodded, a grim, dangerous light flashing in his eyes. "Tell Sterling you need the full forty-eight hours to liquidate the funds. Tell him Nathan is a broken man and he's caving. Feed their egos."
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"And what exactly are you going to do in forty-eight hours?" Diane asked skeptically.
Ethan unzipped his leather bag. "I'm going to find the gasoline she used to burn my brother's life down. And then I'm going to light a match of my own."
