Chapter 598

Chapter 598

Once the evidence chain was complete, police moved immediately to arrest Lorelei.

It happened in the dead of night, before dawn had even broken.

Several squad cars rolled silently to a stop outside the villa where Lorelei had been hiding.

Officers had already surrounded the property on every side.

"Attention, inside the house. You are surrounded."

A cop raised a bullhorn toward the villa. "Come out now and cooperate with the investigation."

Inside, Lorelei jolted upright in bed.

She heard the sirens outside. The color drained from her face in an instant.

"No... that's impossible... how did they find this place..."

She scrambled out of bed in a panic, sprinted to the study, and yanked open the safe. She pulled out every document inside.

Those files contained records of all the illegal dealings she had carried out over the years.

Among them were correspondence between herself, Gareth, and Dominic.

She could not let those documents fall into police hands.

She grabbed her lighter, ready to burn them.

But at that exact moment, the study door exploded off its hinges with a single kick.

"Lorelei — don't move!"

Several officers flooded the room and ripped the lighter and documents from her hands.

"How did you... how could you..."

Lorelei stared at the officers, her entire body shaking.

"Ms. Lorelei Wolfe, you are suspected in connection with multiple criminal offenses. You need to come with us."

An officer produced a pair of handcuffs and snapped them around her wrists.

Lorelei's knees buckled. She nearly crumpled to the floor.

She knew it was over.

She was taken away.

The documents she had tried to destroy were confiscated in their entirety.

Officers also recovered large amounts of cash, jewelry, and other items from the villa — things that were never meant to see the light of day.

---

In the interrogation room.

Lorelei sat in a chair, her face ashen, her eyes unfocused.

Two detectives sat across from her.

"Lorelei. Do you know why you're here?"

She glanced up at them, then dropped her gaze. She didn't answer.

"We have evidence placing you at the center of money laundering, smuggling, kidnapping, aggravated assault, and first-degree murder."

The detective's tone was flat and steady. "Your best move right now is to cooperate fully and give yourself a chance at leniency."

Lorelei still said nothing.

She was holding out.

She knew that any single one of those charges could put her away for life.

If she admitted to them, it would truly, completely be over.

The detectives didn't push her. They knew that breaking someone like Lorelei required more than pressure.

Then the interrogation room door swung open.

Louisa walked in.

She was dressed in all black, her face composed, her eyes cold as stone.

The moment Lorelei saw her, her pupils snapped tight.

"You... what are you doing here?"

"Why wouldn't I be here?"

Louisa crossed the room, sat down across from her, and let the silence stretch for a beat. "Lorelei. We're finally face to face."

Lorelei glared at her, jaw set, complexion iron-gray.

"Don't look so pleased with yourself, Louisa. You don't have anything on me. You can't touch me."

"Nothing on you?"

Louisa gave a short, cold laugh and pulled a stack of documents from her bag, setting them on the table between them.

"This is the evidence of how you controlled Vivian. This is the compromising material you used to blackmail Xanthe. This is the money trail from your laundering operation through the JM Chamber of Commerce. This is the signed statement from the man you hired to kidnap me."

She slid them across the table, one by one.

With each document, Lorelei's face went a shade paler.

"And this."

Louisa produced one final file. Her eyes carried a chill that went bone-deep. "This is the sworn statement from the mechanic who tampered with my parents' car all those years ago. He says you paid him to cut the brake lines."

Lorelei's hands began to tremble.

"No... that wasn't me... he's lying..."

"He's not lying."

Louisa's voice was quiet. Measured. And utterly merciless. "We also traced the number that sent my parents that text message the night of the accident. That number was registered to a distant relative of yours. He disappeared right after the crash." She paused. "Lorelei. Did you really think you'd covered every track?"

Lorelei's lips were shaking.

She looked at Louisa. Her eyes were full of fear.

"And then there's the fire at my parents' company."

Louisa kept going, her voice dropping colder with every word. "A witness saw a woman leaving the building in a hurry right before the fire broke out. That woman was you. And after the fire, twenty million dollars landed in your account — an amount that matches exactly what was paid out from my parents' company insurance policy."

"Lorelei. Tell me. How do you explain any of that?"

Lorelei sat there, shaking from her shoulders down to her hands.

Her defenses cracked. Then they collapsed.

"It... it wasn't me... it really wasn't..."

She was murmuring now, her eyes losing focus. "It was Gareth... it was Dominic... they made me do it... I was just... I was only an accessory..."

Louisa looked at her. The corner of her mouth curved into something that wasn't quite a smile.

An accessory.

Even now, cornered and cuffed, she was still trying to pass the blame.

"Lorelei. It doesn't matter whether you were the one who pulled the trigger or the one who handed over the gun."

Louisa's voice was ice. "Everything you did has a price. And you're going to pay it."

Lorelei's eyes filled with tears.

"Louisa... I was wrong... I know I was wrong..."

She choked on the words. "Please. Just let me go. I'll never do anything like this again. I swear."

"Let you go?"

Louisa held her gaze without a flicker of softness. "Who's going to give my parents their lives back? Who's going to give back the people you destroyed?"

Lorelei went still.

She looked into Louisa's eyes — cold and absolute — and she knew.

It was over.

She slumped in her chair, her gaze hollow.

---

On the other side of the glass, Julian stood watching everything unfold.

His expression was complicated.

There was anguish there. Anger. And something else underneath — something he couldn't quite name.

He knew how long Louisa had waited for this day.

Now, at last, it had come.

---