Chapter 13 - The Deadline
My father had been communicating with Evelyn for fourteen years.
Not continuously.
Not willingly.
But secretly.
“She contacted me after Montreal.”
Victor looked at me.
“She promised Isabella was alive.”
“And you believed her?”
“She sent proof.”
“You never told me.”
“I was trying to find them.”
“For fourteen years?”
“Yes.”
I laughed bitterly.
“You are terrible at finding people for a man who built a global security company.”
His face tightened.
“Evelyn knew every system I built.”
“So you fed her information.”
“Only what she demanded.”
Sophie shook her head.
“That is not true.”
Victor turned.
“Sophie.”
“You sent more.”
“Because she threatened Isabella.”
“You sent employee files.”
Silence.
“Financial records.”
Dad said nothing.
“Security architecture.”
Mara stepped closer.
“You compromised your own company?”
Victor looked at the floor.
“Yes.”
I felt something inside me finally break.
All my life, Vale Strategic Systems had been presented as principle.
Security.
Trust.
Protection.
My father had compromised all three.
“For Mom.”
“Yes.”
I nodded.
“I understand.”
Victor looked surprised.
Then I continued.
“I understand why you did it.”
His eyes softened.
“And I still cannot trust you.”
That hurt him more.
Good.
The Crosswell Tower meeting was twenty-eight hours away.
Mara wanted tactical teams.
Sophie wanted no police.
Claire wanted Damian found first.
I wanted my mother.
We compromised badly.
Which is how most real plans are made.
Mara arranged surveillance around Crosswell Tower without approaching the building.
Sophie gave us one encrypted Orion fragment.
It contained seventeen names.
One shocked everyone.
Chief Federal Judge Matthew Rennick.
Mara knew him personally.
“He signed Damian’s release order.”
Sophie nodded.
“Orion target.”
“Real evidence or fabricated?”
“No way to know.”
Another name.
Governor Elias Warren.
Another.
Police Commissioner Henry Lowe.
Another.
Then:
Victor Vale.
I looked at Dad.
His face did not change.
“What do they have on you?”
He answered instantly.
“Money transfers to Senator Hale.”
“That’s real.”
“Yes.”
“Anything else?”
“I don’t know.”
Sophie said quietly, “I do.”
She opened another file.
Video.
Dad meeting Augustus Cross fifteen years earlier.
Three days after Mom disappeared.
Augustus slid a contract across the table.
Dad signed it.
Crosswell Foundation acquired Halcyon Estate.
I stared at him.
“You transferred Mom’s estate.”
Victor’s jaw tightened.
“Augustus said Isabella had debts.”
“You believed him?”
“No.”
“Then why sign?”
“He had you.”
I stopped.
“What?”
Victor finally looked directly at me.
“You were sixteen.”
“I remember being sixteen.”
“You were taken from school for six hours.”
I searched my memory.
A strange afternoon.
A substitute driver.
Being told Dad had arranged an early pickup.
I had fallen asleep in the car.
Woken at home.
Dad continued.
“I received a photograph of you unconscious.”
My blood turned cold.
“Augustus?”
“Yes.”
“He threatened to kill me.”
“Yes.”
“And you signed.”
“Yes.”
The anger became complicated.
That was worse.
I wanted him to be simply guilty.
Instead he kept being human.
Weak.
Terrified.
Loving.
Dangerous.
At 8:02 p.m., Mara received an emergency notice.
The Vale board had scheduled a vote.
Tomorrow morning.
To remove Victor as chairman.
The person calling the vote?
Evelyn Vale.
Legally, Evelyn still owned twenty-three percent of Vale Strategic Systems.
Because she had never been declared dead.
Her shares had been frozen.
Now she had reappeared through counsel.
And she had enough proxy votes to challenge my father.
“What does she want?” I asked.
Dad stared at the notice.
“Control.”
“Why now?”
Sophie answered.
“Because Vale built the architecture Orion runs on.”
Mara looked at her.
“If Evelyn controls Vale—”
“She controls the only servers capable of authenticating a full release.”
My phone vibrated.
Another message.
From Celeste.
MIDNIGHT TOMORROW.
Then another.
A photograph of Mom.
And one sentence.
COME LATE, AND SHE DIES.
At the same moment, Victor received his own message.
He read it.
His face went pale.
I took the phone.
VOTE WITH ME TOMORROW OR ELENA DIES BEFORE ISABELLA DOES.
Signed:
EVELYN.
The women holding our family hostage were no longer fighting each other from the shadows.
May you like
They were forcing us to choose sides.
And by noon the next day, one of them would control my father’s company.
