Chapter 7 - The Burner Phone in Cell Block 4
In the desolate, concrete walls of the Allenwood Federal Correctional Institution in Pennsylvania, Preston Whitmore was serving his fifteenth year of absolute misery. The former billionaire was currently scrubbing the stainless-steel prep tables in the prison kitchen, his hands raw and blistered from the harsh chemical bleach. He had lost thirty pounds. His dark hair was entirely gray. He was a ghost, forgotten by the world, abandoned by the investors who used to worship him.
At 9:00 PM, back in his tiny, claustrophobic cell, Preston’s cellmate—a smuggler doing twenty years for trafficking—slid a small, sleek burner phone across the metal mattress.
Preston grabbed it with trembling hands. He had paid two cartons of cigarettes and his next three weeks of commissary for ten minutes of battery life. He dialed the encrypted number he had memorized from a smuggled note passed to him in the laundry room two days prior.
"It's about time," Sloan’s voice crackled through the cheap speaker.
Preston squeezed his eyes shut, a surge of adrenaline and hatred washing over him. "Sloan. You actually got out."
"No thanks to you," she spat. "I've been in a cage for three years while your bitch of a wife plays CEO with our money. But I have her cornered, Preston. I confronted her this morning. I threatened to leak fabricated financial documents to the SEC."
"Are you insane?" Preston whispered fiercely, terrified the guards walking the cell block would hear. "Natalie isn't stupid. She’ll have her lawyers gut you before you can even hit send."
"She can't risk the PR nightmare," Sloan argued confidently. "But I need capital to execute the leak properly. I need money to pay off a journalist to run the story without vetting the sources. You told me once that you had a hidden crypto wallet. A fail-safe the FBI never found when they raided the penthouse."
Preston hesitated. It was true. Deep in the blockchain, hidden behind layers of encrypted shell companies, he had stashed nearly four million dollars in untraceable Bitcoin. It was his only safety net, his only hope for a life after his sentence was served.
"If I give you the seed phrase," Preston said, his voice laced with venomous greed, "you destroy her. You take her down, Sloan. You take the company from her, and you put half the settlement money into a trust for me under an alias."
"We destroy her together, Preston," Sloan promised, a wicked smile evident in her tone. "Give me the keys."
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Sitting in the dark, damp cell, driven entirely by spite and a desperate need for revenge against the woman who had bested him, Preston recited the twelve-word recovery phrase.
He hung up the burner phone, a cruel smile touching his chapped lips for the first time in years. Natalie thought she had won. But she was about to learn that a cornered, desperate man with nothing left to lose was the most dangerous enemy in the world.
