Chapter Twenty-One – No Way Out

 Janet spent the morning in a blur of phone calls. She sat beside Lorne in the hotel restaurant, coffee growing cold as she dialed bank after bank, credit card company after credit card company. Each call ended the same way: investigations opened, fraud alerts placed, new cards to be mailed to her home address in Toronto.

“We’ll need you to fill out affidavits,” one rep said, voice cool and clinical. “In the meantime, your accounts will remain frozen.”

“How long?” Janet asked.

“Thirty to ninety days, depending on the claim.”

She bit her lip. Ninety days. She couldn’t even wait ninety hours without cash.

By lunch, she finally reached a senior fraud officer. His voice was patient but firm.

“Ms. Brown, you’re dealing with someone skilled. If they had access to your email and accounts, you must assume your laptop is compromised. Wipe it clean. Don’t just delete Threema—factory reset the entire system. New passwords. New number. New email. Otherwise, you’re leaving the front door wide open.”

Janet sat frozen. Wipe her laptop? Lose every note, every transcript? It felt like cutting off her own arm. But in the end, she did it—watching the machine reboot, the screen go black, weeks of work erased in seconds.

By afternoon, a new problem hit: her cell service was dead. She tried calling her father, but the phone displayed NO NETWORK. She tried again. Nothing. Panic rose fast.

“She’s got my phone now too,” Janet muttered, tossing it onto the bed.

“Here,” Lorne said, handing her his. “Use mine.”

She called Edward, voice trembling as she explained: the drained accounts, the hacked cards, the dead line.

He listened in silence, then spoke with the clipped precision she knew from his courtroom days.

“First—file police reports for every single account, even if the banks already have them. Create a paper trail. Second—get affidavits in writing. Third—contact a civil lawyer in Toronto. You may need an injunction if she’s still inside your identity. And finally—stop panicking. Panic is exactly what she wants.”

Janet swallowed hard. “I don’t even have money for a cab.”

“I’ll wire transfer funds this afternoon,” Edward said. “But use Lorne’s name, not yours. If she’s watching, she could intercept it.”

She closed her eyes. For the first time, this wasn’t about a story or a headline. This was survival. Rossi had gutted her finances, stolen her phone, stripped away control. What came next?

That night, Janet lay awake, staring at the ceiling. Lorne had gone home. Her laptop was empty. Her phone, useless.

She replayed the meeting with Rossi’s parents—their sorrow, their disbelief. And then one word snagged in her mind:

She gambled.

Janet sat up, pulse hammering.

Casinos.

If Ramona Rossi was still feeding that hunger, maybe they could trace her through the tables she thought made her untouchable.

A spark flickered in Janet’s chest.

The hunt wasn’t over. It was just beginning.