The lighting inside the private dining room of Le Bernardin was dim and intimate.
Serena sat across from Arthur, slowly swirling a glass of dark red wine.
Arthur looked like a wreck.
He had changed his suit, but he was still vibrating with the nervous, inadequate rage from the driveway encounter.
He downed his scotch in one gulp and slammed the glass onto the white tablecloth.
"She threw the pieces in my face," Arthur muttered, staring at the empty glass. "Five hundred million dollars. She didn't even blink."
Serena watched him, her fingers moving up to stroke the diamond pendant at her throat.
She needed to destroy the last lingering doubt in Arthur's mind. She needed him to believe Jett was absolute scum.
Serena leaned across the table, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper.
"Arthur, I hired a private investigator this morning," Serena lied, her eyes wide and earnest.
Arthur looked up, his brow furrowing. "And?"
"That trip Jett took to Eastern Europe before you got married?" Serena paused, letting the silence build the tension.
"She wasn't backpacking. She was with a Russian oligarch. She was his mistress."
Arthur's jaw dropped.
His hands gripped the edge of the table.
"What?" he breathed.
"The investigator found the flight logs," Serena continued, weaving the lie flawlessly.
"That five hundred million she brought to the marriage? It was dirty money. She was using the Vanderbilt accounts to wash it for the mafia."
Arthur's eyes widened.
His bias devoured the lie instantly. It made perfect sense to him. It explained the offshore accounts. It explained her coldness.
"She needs the one point five billion to pay back the dark web syndicates," Serena whispered, reaching out to cover his hand with hers.
"She is a desperate, filthy criminal, Arthur."
"That bitch," Arthur hissed, his face twisting with a sudden, violent righteous anger. "She almost dragged my family into a federal RICO case!"
Serena squeezed his hand, a fake, warm smile spreading across her face.
"The Sinclair family will stand by you, Arthur. We will crush her."
Arthur's phone buzzed on the table.
He glanced at the screen. It was a breaking news alert from his PR director. The stock just dropped another three percent in after-hours trading. The board is demanding a scapegoat. Arthur let out a shaky breath, the reality of his grandfather's threat looming over him.
He looked at Serena, a manic gleam in his eye.
"Grandfather gave me control. This is my chance to prove I can lead the group."
"Then we need the best," Serena said immediately.
She leaned back, her eyes gleaming with calculation.
"We need Preston Pierce."
Arthur swallowed hard.
Preston Pierce was a legal butcher. He only handled billion-dollar corporate warfare.
"He is too expensive," Arthur hesitated. "And he doesn't take domestic cases."
"My father plays golf with the senior partners at his firm," Serena said confidently, waving off his concern.
"I will make a call. We will have Preston Pierce on retainer by tomorrow morning. Jett will be begging on her knees."
Arthur smiled, the image of Jett crying in a courtroom finally soothing his bruised ego.
Miles away, parked on the dark coastal highway, Jett sat in the silence of her car.
She stared at the black card.
She opened the heavily encrypted messaging app on her phone.
She typed in the complex string of numbers printed on the card.
The screen went black for a second, then loaded into a highly secure, dark-web chat interface.
There was no profile picture. Just a blinking cursor.
Jett paused, her thumbs hovering over the keyboard.
She did not forget the alias Harrison had given her. In fact, Harrison had explicitly instructed her to use a specific, incorrect bait-name. It was a compliance test, a psychological tripwire designed to see how the apex predator of litigation reacted to a deliberate breach of his protocol. She smiled, a cold, calculating curve of her lips.
She typed: Uncle Simon.
She hit send.
The soft whoosh of the message sending echoed in the quiet car.
High above the city, in the penthouse office of the Pierce Law Firm, a man sat in the dark.
Preston Pierce stared at his private, encrypted monitor.
The message Uncle Simon glowed bright green against the black screen.
Preston leaned back in his leather chair, a slow, dangerous smile curving his lips.
He raised his right hand and began to tap his index finger against the mahogany desk.
A slow, rhythmic tap.
Someone had just breached his private channel. And they had the wrong name.
