Chapter 1 - LAUGH WHILE YOU STILL CAN
The laughter began before I reached the center of the ballroom.
By the time my husband lifted his champagne glass, I already knew exactly who would be arrested first.
The Grand Marlowe Hotel glittered above Chicago’s Gold Coast, its Halloween ballroom crowded with velvet masks, crystal chandeliers and people wealthy enough to mistake cruelty for entertainment. I wore a simple black dress and no mask.
I did not need one.
The bruise around my left eye was swollen purple, impossible to ignore.
Grant Mercer stood beneath the largest chandelier dressed as a king. Gold thread covered his velvet coat. A jeweled crown rested on his dark hair, and the costume’s heavy cape made him appear broader than he was.
His mother, Eleanor, wore a bloodred gown and enough diamonds to pay a nurse’s salary for several years. His younger sister, Vanessa, filmed me as I crossed the room.
Grant spread his arms.
“There she is.”
Heads turned.
He raised his glass toward my bruised face.
“I’m the one who taught her a lesson. Now she doesn’t need a costume.”
The room erupted.
Some guests laughed because Grant controlled their bonuses. Others laughed because Eleanor was watching. A few looked toward the exits and pretended not to have heard.
Vanessa nearly dropped her phone.
Eleanor leaned toward a banker and said loudly, “Maybe pain will finally make Sarah obedient.”
I stopped beneath the chandelier.
Grant expected me to cry. For three years, he had trained everyone around us to see me as quiet, dependent and unstable. He controlled our public accounts, answered questions directed at me and called my silence proof that I had nothing intelligent to say.
He had also isolated me from my father.
According to Grant, Dad was an angry retired police captain who wanted control of the trust my mother left me. According to Grant, every warning Dad sent was proof of jealousy.
What Grant never understood was that silence had once been my profession.
Before marrying him, I worked as a forensic accountant for the Illinois attorney general’s financial-crimes bureau. I traced shell companies, falsified invoices, stolen pensions and hidden transfers.
Grant knew I had “worked for the state.”
He had never asked what I did.
Or so I had believed.
Two nights earlier, he found me copying files from his private server.
“You’re auditing me now?” he asked.
“I’m trying to understand why Mercer Capital sent nine million dollars through companies that don’t have employees.”
His first punch struck my cheekbone.
The second sent me into the corner of his desk.
He stood over me while blood ran onto the carpet.
“You belong to me.”
I looked up at him and said, “Not after Halloween.”
He thought fear had made me dramatic.
He did not know I had already sent an encrypted copy of the files to three people: my father, Assistant Attorney General Lena Ortiz and Miriam Cole, the attorney overseeing my mother’s trust.
Now Grant crossed the ballroom and stopped in front of me.
“You should thank me,” he said softly. “Everyone was worried you might embarrass yourself tonight. I gave them something harmless to laugh about.”
“You always did like choosing the story before anyone else could speak.”
His smile stiffened.
A tall masked guest stepped away from the wall behind him.
The man removed a silver wolf mask.
My father’s hair had gone almost completely gray since I last saw him. Daniel Hale had spent thirty-two years with the Chicago Police Department, the final eight commanding a financial-crimes task force.
Grant’s face changed.
“Who let him in?”
Dad placed a sealed evidence packet on the table beside Grant’s champagne glass.
“Laugh while you still can,” he said.
A metallic click traveled through the ballroom.
The main doors closed.
Grant looked toward the hotel manager.
“Open them.”
“The doors are secured under police instruction,” the manager replied. “Emergency exits remain operational.”
No one was trapped. The ballroom had simply become a controlled scene while investigators executed warrants in the hotel offices above us.
Six plainclothes officers entered through a service corridor with Lena Ortiz behind them.
She wore no costume.
“Nobody delete, destroy or transfer anything from a phone or computer,” she announced. “Guests who witnessed the assault may be asked for statements.”
Vanessa stopped laughing.
Her thumb began moving across her screen.
Dad saw it.
“Put the phone on the table.”
“You can’t order me around.”
Lena stepped toward her. “Ms. Mercer, stop using the device.”
Vanessa turned and hurried toward a side door.
An officer intercepted her before she reached it. She threw the phone against the marble floor and drove her heel into the screen.
“It slipped,” she said.
The officer placed her hands behind her back.
She was arrested first.
Evidence tampering.
Grant watched his sister being led away and recovered his smile.
“Vanessa panicked,” he said. “That has nothing to do with me.”
Lena opened the sealed packet Dad had brought.
“This affidavit concerns shell entities connected to Mercer Capital, unauthorized transfers from the Hale Family Trust and possible theft from two employee retirement funds.”
Eleanor’s wineglass stopped halfway to her lips.
Grant looked at me.
“You copied private company records.”
“I preserved evidence.”
“You stole it.”
“Then tell them what the transfers were for.”
He stepped close enough that I could smell champagne.
“You have no idea what you found.”
“That’s why I invited professionals.”
Lena took me aside while officers began collecting phones and directing witnesses toward separate tables.
Her expression was not triumphant.
“Sarah, Grant filed a criminal complaint yesterday.”
“Against whom?”
“You.”
“For copying the server?”
“For embezzlement.”
She handed me a copy of the complaint.
My name appeared as the owner of three shell companies that had received more than eleven million dollars.
My electronic signature appeared on every transfer.
Across the ballroom, Grant raised his glass again.
May you like
This time, he was not laughing.
He was waiting to see whether the story he had built around me would survive the night.
