"Every dirty transaction you've run for the past five years is on this drive. Every last entry in your secret ledger. One press of a button, and you and your pristine little wife can spend the rest of your lives behind bars."
The color drained from Dennis's face the instant he saw it.
He knew exactly what was on that drive.
Before I went to prison, I'd made a contingency—quietly copying the East District's core transaction records and hiding them where no one would think to look.
"Margot Delgado! You dare threaten me?!"
Dennis snapped. He ripped the pistol from his waistband and leveled it between my eyes.
"Hand over that drive! Or I swear you won't walk out of here alive!"
The tension in the hall was suffocating.
Every person in that room held their breath, unable to believe that Dennis had actually drawn a gun on the woman who once nearly died for him.
Nellie cowered behind his back, venom glittering in her eyes, silently willing the bullet to fly.
I stared down the barrel without blinking.
I knew Dennis better than anyone.
Greedy. Selfish. But underneath all that bluster, he was a coward to the bone.
He would never pull that trigger. He was too afraid of dying, too afraid of losing everything he'd stolen.
"Go ahead. Shoot."
I stepped forward and pressed my forehead against the cold steel of the muzzle.
"Pull the trigger, Dennis. I dare you." My voice was steady, quiet, absolute. "The second my heart stops, this ledger lands on a federal agent's desk. I guarantee it."
Dennis's hand shook violently. Beads of cold sweat broke out across his forehead.
His teeth were clenched so hard his jaw trembled, his eyes flooded with conflict and raw terror.
"Margot, don't push me like this... We loved each other once. Why do you have to take it this far?"
He was still trying to soften me. His voice dripped with a plea so pathetic it turned my stomach.
"Loved each other?"
What an absurd choice of words.
The old wound in my abdomen throbbed, stirred awake by the surge of emotion.
"When I was being held underwater until I nearly suffocated, where were you? When I was beaten so badly I hemorrhaged and almost lost my uterus, where were you then?"
I advanced on him, step by step. Dennis stumbled backward under the weight of my presence.
"You were lying in her bed, planning your beautiful future together! Dennis, your love makes me sick."
"Enough!"