White Collar Blackmail: White Collar Crime Financial Suspense Thriller Read Online Free PDF Page A

wanted to see was how these white collar criminals operated. Once he’d learned all they could teach him, he would buy them out. Should they be disinclined to sell, he would remove them.
    He hadn’t been disappointed and had come a long way in a comparatively short time. He remembered his first board meeting when Dermott Becker had said there were a hundred companies interposed between Vulture and ACME. Borchard had no idea what interposed meant, but he wasn’t shy about asking. He’d sat in many meetings where the participants were too embarrassed to ask what they saw as dumb questions for fear of being ridiculed. Brock Borchard had no such reservations and asked any question that came to his mind. Only the brave and the stupid laughed. He’d always known that the mega-rich had international bank accounts but had no idea of their intricacies. Now he could differentiate the pros and cons of Liechtenstein, Hong Kong, the Caymans, Swiss and Irish banks. His businesses now operated under complex corporate and tax structures and Ridgeway had shown him ways to launder cash that defied belief. ACME owned legitimate retail chains comprising more than a thousand outlets and banked large amounts of cash daily. A perfect cover to launder drug monies. When Borchard had asked about the taxes the retail businesses paid on the drug monies, Dermott Becker had said, “We don’t mind paying our fair share of taxes. No one around this table is going to meet the same fate as Al Capone.”
     
    When Borchard got off the plane, he was greeted by a gigantic man with scraggly black hair and a swarthy complexion not dissimilar to his own. “Did ya have a successful trip, boss?”
    “It was fine, Farik,” Borchard replied. “We have little time to waste? Where’s the limo?”
    “At the front of the terminal with the engine running. I knew you’d be running short of time, so I brought Ahmet with me.”
    The limo was in a no parking area, and the rear door was being held open by a man only slightly less monstrous than Farik. “Ahmet, take me to my penthouse and wait while I get changed,” Borchard said. “I’m havin’ dinner with Joe Brereton of the Federated Laborers Union, and I don’t want to be late. Did you get the cash, Farik?”
    “Of course, boss,” Farik replied, “fifty thousand in a plain envelope just as you said.”
    “Good, and, in case I forget to tell ya later, I want ya to pick me up at five in the mornin’. I’ll need a run, some cool air, and a hard workout after puttin’ up with Brereton’s bullshit tonight.”
     
    It was a bleak morning; the wind was howling, and it was bitterly cold when Farik pulled up at the front of the Rialto Towers in exclusive North Wabash Avenue. Sitting next to him was the third member of the Serbian Mafia, a wiry little man who had changed his name from Dragan Voinovich to Dirk Vaughan shortly after coming to America. A master of disguise, he was the smallest and most deadly of the trio. They saw their boss coming out of the revolving doors wearing a white t-shirt, black tracksuit pants, and Nikes. He immediately started running at a rapid rate, enjoying the feel of the icy wind cutting through his lean body. He lengthened his stride and increased his pace as he turned hard right onto East Ohio Street. A few minutes later he was on North Lake Shore Drive heading to North Beach. It was pitch black, but he could hear the lake’s water lapping up against the shore. He looked down at the stopwatch on his right wrist before glancing at the heart rate monitor on his left. It was reading 185. His doctor had told him that his maximum safe heart rate was 150 beats per minute, but still he pushed harder. He’d completed two miles and knowing that he only had another mile to go, he again increased the pace. His lungs were burning and despite the cold, sweat from his forehead dripped into eyes and blurred his vision. His legs ached but still he drove himself. He was one of that rare