Chapter 7 - The Arrest of Lila Summers
While Andrew was being dismantled on the seventy-fifth floor of Vance Tower, five miles away in an upscale café in SoHo, Lila Summers was having lunch with a prospective new sponsor.
She wore a bright red designer dress, sipping a bellini, laughing loudly as she leaned across the table toward a middle-aged hedge fund manager who was clearly enchanted by her manufactured beauty.
"Oh, Jeffrey, you're so funny!" Lila giggled, touching his hand. "Andrew was just so... boring, you know? He didn't have the vision you have. I always said he was punching above his weight."
"Is that so, Miss Summers?"
A sharp, authoritative voice cut through the café.
Lila frowned, turning around.
Four uniformed NYPD officers and two plainclothes FBI special agents stood behind her table. The entire restaurant fell silent. The clatter of silverware stopped instantly.
"What is this?" Lila scoffed, crossing her arms. "Do you know who I am? I'm having a private lunch!"
"Lila Summers?" Special Agent Harris asked, flashing his gold badge.
"Yes, obviously!"
"You are under arrest for conspiracy to commit securities fraud, interstate wire fraud, and receipt of stolen corporate property," Agent Harris announced calmly.
The hedge fund manager across from her recoiled as if she had suddenly caught fire, sliding out of his booth and raising his hands. "I don't know her! We just met ten minutes ago!"
"Jeffrey!" Lila shrieked.
She turned on the agents, her face twisting into a furious mask. "You can't arrest me! I didn't do anything! Andrew bought me those things! He gave me that money!"
"The twelve million dollars Mr. Weston transferred to your shell company in the Cayman Islands was stolen from federally insured pension funds, Miss Summers," the agent said. "And we have recorded telephone conversations of you demanding those transfers in exchange for keeping his corporate mismanagement secret from his board."
The agent pulled a pair of heavy steel handcuffs from his belt.
"Hands behind your back."
"No! Get your filthy hands off me!" Lila screamed, flailing her arms, knocking over her glass of bellini, spilling peach nectar and champagne all over her designer dress. "Andrew! Where is Andrew? Andrew, fix this!"
Dozens of diners pulled out their smartphones, recording every second of her hysterical breakdown. Flashes illuminated the café just as they had illuminated the ballroom four months ago.
Except this time, there was no red carpet.
There was only the cold click of steel locking around her wrists.
"Keep moving," the officer commanded, dragging the screaming, cursing mistress out of the restaurant into the blinding afternoon sun, where a half-dozen news vans were already waiting to broadcast her arrest to the entire world.
Across the street, parked quietly at the curb, sat a black town car with tinted windows.
Inside, Dominic Vance lowered his window an inch, watched Lila being shoved into the back of a police cruiser, and tapped the divider.
May you like
"Drive," Dominic said to his chauffeur. "The trash has been collected."
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