Domino

Domino

By

Chris Barnhart

Copyright ©2014 Chris Barnhart

Published by Chris Barnhart at Smashwords

Cover by Chris Barnhart

This eBook is licensed for your personal
enjoyment only. This eBook may not be resold or given away to other
people. If you would like to share this book with another person,
please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re
reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not just for
your use only, then please return to your favorite eBook retailer
and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work
of this author.

CHAPTER 1

Avery felt his throat tighten. It constricted,
as if invisible iron fingers were crushing him, agonizingly slow,
making him fight for every breath. He forced himself to swallow but
he couldn't control the shaking. He mopped his brow and the back of
his neck with a black silk handkerchief with one hand, the other
remained in a white-knuckled death grip on the steering wheel of
the Lincoln Town Car.

The night was hot and sticky, the temperature
still near ninety although it was near midnight. Avery fidgeted
with the air conditioning controls and slipped a disk into the
compact disk player. Not even the soothing strings of the symphony
orchestra could calm his tortured nerves. His long, delicate hands
trembled as he turned the black sedan from the Bel Air canyon road
onto Sunset Boulevard heading east.

In his twenty-five years, he had never even
contemplated doing what he was about to do. He clenched his teeth
against the rising nausea and, for the hundredth time, forced
himself to relax. It was not like he was committing a crime, he
recited over and over again in his mind. He was just taking back
what belonged to him. He could not convince his older brother,
Byron that the game was over, that they'd been led to the
slaughter, to financial ruin. The time had come for Avery to cut
his losses and get as far away as possible. Only he wasn't sure
just how far was far enough from the Wolfe.

Byron was such a fool. They had both been
idiots to think that Morgan Wolfe could save their asses. The Roth
Galleries belonged to him and Byron, or did it? Probably not any
more. Avery had tried to make sense out of the financial statements
that Wolfe's accountant sent him. Even with a degree in business
Avery could not find the paper trail that led to the embezzled
profits he knew Wolfe had extracted from the once prosperous,
family owned art galleries. It would take an auditor months to find
out just how Morgan Wolfe entangled the two brothers in his web
and, like a hungry spider, slowly sucked the life blood from the
company, leaving a near empty shell. The Roth Galleries were one of
the most prestigious art houses in the world, with galleries in
Beverly Hills, New York, London, and Rome. They had never been in
the red in their thirty year history. Not while Anson Roth was
still alive. But the two young Roth brothers didn't have a fraction
of the business expertise of their father. When they ran into
trouble, it was a little known financier that bailed them out. Then
he took control. By the time they found out that their savior was
well connected in international crime families, including the Lu
dynasty of Asian drug smuggling, and the Sobrieto smuggling cartel
in Brazil, it was too late.

Avery eased the Lincoln Town car off Wilshire
Boulevard into the parking garage under the high rise office
building, using his plastic card to open the gate. There were only
three other cars parked on the street level, die-hard executives
burning the midnight oil over some important contracts, Avery
thought. He recognized none of them as he got out of the car and
stood for a moment to steady his nerves. He looked around for the
security guard but the garage was dark and close as the oppressive
humidity outside.

The nape of his neck prickled as he inserted
his private key to activate the after- hours elevator lock. He felt
impressed with a nameless apprehension, a sensation of lurking
peril. Avery reminded himself again that he was doing nothing
wrong. The weary repetition of it made his head throb. What he was
after belonged to him. He needed it to get away, to live abroad
until Wolfe abandoned the empty husk of Roth Galleries and went on
to more succulent prey.

The low whoosh of the opening elevator doors
startled him. His heart battered inside his eardrums, and his legs
seemed wooden and heavy. The elevator doors closed, and Avery
suddenly felt trapped. He had not slept soundly in two weeks, knew
he was close to collapse. Any moment he might break apart and his
nerves shatter like thin lead crystal. He hunched closer into
himself, wedged into the corner of the elevator for the eternal
crawl to the eleventh floor.

The elevator doors at the far end of the floor
slid open and Avery stepped cautiously into the oak paneled
hallway. The droning of a vacuum cleaner hummed behind closed doors
in the far distance. If anyone should stop him and ask questions,
he was just getting his forgotten briefcase from his office before
embarking on a business trip to an estate auction in London early
in the morning. All of the security personnel knew him but that was
not a comforting thought. Wolfe had staffed the office with his
personal spies, and Avery was suspicious of even the building's
outside contracted cleaning crew. He slipped the key into the lock
of the Roth Galleries office door and soundlessly eased it open. He
was met with only a quiet darkness.

He threaded his way in the inky blackness,
past the receptionist's desk, the accounting department, and down
the hallway that led to the executive's offices. Wolfe's door was
locked and there was no light in the window when Avery had scanned
it from the street. Yet Avery still felt a chilling fear as he
crept past that office door. He didn't let out his breath until he
had closed the door of his own office and snapped on the small
brass desk lamp.

Now, he worked quickly and methodically
according to his plan. Adrenaline kept him in constant, fluid
motion as he dug his briefcase out from under his desk and set it
open on the credenza. From a hidden floor safe he took handfuls of
bound stacks of hundred dollar bills and laid them neatly in the
bottom of the case.

A door slammed somewhere in the distance and
Avery froze, heart pounding. He dared not move until he was certain
that it was just the cleaning crew down the hall or some diligent
late night office worker on the floor below. Avery relaxed when the
office had settled once again into a deep silence. He took a file
folder thick with documents, financial statements, and related
papers from the safe and laid them on top of the money. Then from a
hidden alcove in his desk, he removed two airline tickets,
considered a moment, tucked one in the inside pocket of his coat,
the other he returned to the credenza. The phone suddenly
rang.

Avery jumped. He was mesmerized by the
blinking green light, his throat constricted and his pulse raced.
He wouldn't dare answer it, and almost sagged with relief when the
automatic voice-mail picked it up after the fifth ring. He took his
cell phone out of his pocket and placed it in the desk drawer.
There was only one more item, one last thing he had to take with
him. He bent down to open the credenza's hidden sliding panel, and
took out the black velvet box. He brought it up under the light and
opened it carefully. It was a tiny winged crystal angel.

"You can't run from it, Avery," the quiet
voice was like a gust of icy wind. Avery looked up, startled, then
relaxed and almost smiled, until he saw the gun. His older brother
looked haggard and drawn, pasty and slump shouldered, with deep
circles under his doleful blue eyes. At twenty six, Byron Roth
looked fifty. The pressures of the past two years had been
monstrous. The Glock 19 quivered slightly in Byron hand.

"It's all over, Byron," Avery said quietly,
gaging the tension that could explode in Byron at the least
provocation. "You read the detective's report."

"Where the hell do you think you were going to
go?" Byron replied.

"If you were smart you'd get out too. Wolfe
has been an ugly tumor on our business. We let it grow too long.
It's inoperable, Byron. We're dead financially. Not to mention the
forgeries. But we’re not supposed to know about those, are
we?

“We're in too deep, Avery. You know that.
Wolfe won't let you get across the street with that
money."

"It's my share, Byron. I earned it legally and
legitimately. I'm not taking anything that belongs to
Wolfe."

"Everything belongs to Wolfe, you stupid fool.
If you leave, what happens to the galleries?" Byron almost whined,
his voice cracking with strain. "I can't do it alone. Not with
Wolfe's nose in everything. You can't just cut and run because
things are rough."

"Things aren't rough, brother," Avery snapped.
"They're out of control. Did you ever actually read the report I
gave you?"

"He's not as bad as your private detective
made out," Byron insisted, trying desperately to control the flames
of rage slowly consuming him. "Wolfe pulled us out of the red like
he promised. You have a good life that this company pays for. Don't
blow it, Avery."

"Where the hell will the money come from?"
Avery asked. "I'll tell you where. It sure as hell won't come from
selling art. I know that crap in the warehouses isn't worth the
play dough it's made out of. The Matisses and Cezannes are fakes.
Excellent ones, but fakes none the less.

"I'm warning you, Avery, don't cross
Wolfe."

"I'm outta here."

Byron pointed the gun at his brother's heart.
"The money stays," Byron said flatly. "Wolfe's orders."

"Has he gotten to you that much? You'd shoot
your own brother? Byron, think, man. Look what he's doing to us.
He's got us terrified of him." Avery looked down the barrel of the
gun and swallowed hard. "And terrified of each other."

"Don't run, Avery," Byron pleaded. "Stick it
out a few more months. I have a plan to buy him out. I need you."
The gun was shaking. Avery knew Byron could never go through with
it, no matter how terrified he was of Wolfe.

"You can't buy someone like Wolfe out," Avery
grinned bleakly. "He's not going to leave until he's done with us,
until Roth Galleries Corporation is an empty, pitiful shell. Get a
grip, Byron." Avery looked at the crystal angel in his hand. "This
was mother's favorite. I didn't think you'd mind my taking
it."

Avery laid it carefully in the velvet box and
put it in the briefcase, snapping it shut with a definite finality.
He slid the case off the desk, and with his eyes never leaving
Byron's face or the gun pointed at him, Avery started toward the
office door.

"Don't," Byron cried.

"Go home and get some sleep," said Avery
sadly. "You have a family to take care of."

Avery shouldered past his brother, the pain
and anguish evident in every line of Byron's face. His lips
quivered as he tried one more time to stop Avery from incurring the
dreadful wrath of their company president.

"Avery!" he yelled. "He'll find you,
Avery!"

"My flight to Singapore leaves in half an
hour. He'll have to be quick."

"What about me?"

"There's another plane ticket to Singapore in
the hidden drawer of my credenza. If you're smart, you'll use
it."

Avery knew that if Wolfe found out he was
cutting out with over two and a half million in company funds, he
would strike as swiftly and deadly as a cobra. Avery had spent this
last month refiguring the financial statements, and came up with a
realistic, legitimate profit figure, back salary, bonuses, and
commissions on the books he should have received in the last year,
as well as benefits. Then, using Wolfe's scheme of bogus sales, he
was able to amass through expense checks, drafts, and wire
transfers, over two million due to him into foreign accounts and
half a million in cash. He also photocopied all of the documents
proving his right to the money should there be any legal squealing
from Wolfe.