Page 40 of The Wrong Monster

“Oh, absolutely not.” He shoots to his feet so quickly his chair skids backward. “Replacing me?” His voice cracks somewhere between outrage and disbelief. “Have you finally lost your damn mind?”

Vasily doesn’t move. “I don’t believe so.”

“You kidnap a defense attorney, parade her into your office, and expect me to applaud?”

“No.” Vasily folds his hands loosely on the desktop. “I expect you to obey.”

Beaumont laughs once, but the sound is high-pitched and desperate. “I’ve represented you for twenty years, Vasily. I knew your father⁠—”

“It doesn’t matter who you knew. Your time has run out, Beaumont.”

“And this is how you repay me?”

Vasily’s expression doesn’t change. His voice doesn’t rise. But he makes himself very clear: “If you ever mistake a business decision for a personal betrayal again...” He pauses just long enough for the silence to become oppressive. “...I’ll begin wondering whether you’re still useful to me. Or whether I need to tie up loose ends.”

Every hair on my arms stands up.

I’ve seen judges silence courtrooms; federal prosecutors reduce seasoned criminals to stammering wrecks. I’ve commanded juries as if they were puppets, all attached to my fingers, my wrists. None of it compares to this.

He sounds inevitable.

Beaumont’s jaw works once. Then, without another word, he lowers himself back into his chair.

“Good,” Vasily says. “Now brief her.”

Beaumont exhales through his nose, straightens the file in front of him, and slides it across the desk toward me.

“Mikhail signed off on what should have been an entirely ordinary payment.”

I open the folder.

“A luxury lodge renovation,” Beaumont continues. “Deep Waters Properties initiated a two-point-eight-million-dollar project. Everything appeared routine. Invoices came through Deep Waters Lumber, followed by payments to a subcontractor responsible for structural framing.”

“So where’s the problem?”

“The subcontractor hired another subcontractor.”

I look up.

“One of Yuri’s men.”

Beaumont nods grimly.

“Mikhail approved the payments. He says the paperwork he signed described legitimate framing work, not inflated invoices or a company tied to Yuri’s organization. Yuri’s people documented every payment, then anonymously handed the trail to state investigators.”

“They’ve added enterprise corruption to the financial charges,” Beaumont says. “They’re alleging these payments were part of a criminal enterprise, not an isolated bookkeeping error.”

“And release?”

“Denied. The prosecution argued he has money and connections abroad. The judge remanded him.”

So a check won’t get him out. I turn back to the file, looking for what Beaumont actually offered the court to answer that argument.

I flip through the invoices, my stomach sinking.

“It wasn’t the money that caught him,” I murmur. “It was the paper trail.”

“And someone made sure the government knew exactly where to look.” Vasily’s fingers drum a rhythm across the desktop once, abruptly.