Chapter 17 - CHARLES BLACKWOOD'S CONFESSION
Daniel did not hug his father.
He punched him.
Once.
Hard enough to knock the seventy-one-year-old man against Samuel’s workbench.
Emily screamed.
Daniel stepped back immediately.
Charles wiped blood from his lip.
“I deserved that.”
“You let me bury you.”
“Yes.”
“You let my children believe you were dead.”
“Yes.”
“You let Grace die.”
Charles looked toward Emily.
“No.”
Daniel grabbed him again.
“Then tell me who did it.”
Charles closed his eyes.
“Jonah Reed.”
Everyone stared.
Jonah was young.
Too young to have built Meridian.
“He didn’t order it,” Charles continued.
“He executed it.”
“Who ordered it?”
Charles looked at Daniel.
“Caroline.”
Emily immediately said, “Mom left a clue saying not Caroline.”
Charles stared at her.
“What clue?”
She showed him the bridge.
He examined it.
Then laughed sadly.
“Grace figured it out.”
“Figured what out?”
“Caroline wasn’t Caroline anymore.”
Daniel looked furious.
“Stop talking in riddles.”
Charles explained.
Meridian used names as administrative titles.
Eleanor Voss was not always one person.
Caroline was not always one person.
C.B. did not mean an individual.
It meant Crown Black.
The top administrator.
The person currently controlling the network.
Grace discovered this shortly before the crash.
Whoever became Crown Black inherited Caroline’s digital identity.
Voice samples.
Authentication credentials.
Video archives.
The phone call might not have been Daniel’s mother at all.
It could have been anyone using synthesized voice.
Torres asked, “Who is Crown Black now?”
Charles looked ashamed.
“Victor.”
Daniel stared.
“Victor Sloane?”
“Yes.”
Victor had staged his disappearance.
Staged the blood.
Controlled the Meridian identity.
He had manipulated everyone from the beginning.
Grace trusted him as a source.
Charles trusted him to confirm his fake death.
Daniel trusted him with foundation finances.
Victor had access to every side.
“Why?” Emily asked.
Charles looked at her.
“Because Victor believed Meridian should belong to him.”
But Grace stole the master index.
Without the musical cipher, Victor possessed a weapon he could not aim.
That was why Emily mattered.
Not her birthday money.
Not the trust.
The cipher.
“Can he decode it without me?”
“Eventually.”
“How long?”
Charles looked at Grace’s manuscript.
“Maybe forty-eight hours.”
The timer changed.
Two days.
If Victor decoded the index, he could identify every person Meridian had compromised.
Billions in blackmail.
Political leverage.
Corporate control.
Daniel looked at Torres.
“We find him.”
Charles shook his head.
“He’ll come to you.”
“Why?”
“He needs Emily’s memory.”
Grace never wrote the entire cipher.
Some rules she taught Emily as childhood music games.
Victor needed Emily alive.
That made her safer.
And much more valuable.
They began the counterattack.
Torres leaked a false story claiming the manuscript had been destroyed in the Blackwood Systems fire.
Daniel publicly resigned as CEO.
Lydia froze foundation accounts.
Charles provided federal agents with hidden Meridian nodes.
Evelyn testified.
Thomas returned safely.
Raymond confessed publicly to his role in Grace’s surveillance and accepted arrest.
For the first time, everyone stopped hiding.
Victor reacted.
At 8:14 p.m., Emily received a video.
The rare violin appeared on screen.
Victor’s hand held it.
“You want your mother’s instrument?”
He spoke off camera.
“Come perform her last composition.”
A location appeared.
Commonwealth Conservatory.
The abandoned concert hall.
Tomorrow.
Midnight.
Daniel said no.
Emily said yes.
This time Daniel did not tell her she was a child who couldn’t understand.
He sat beside her.
“If we do this, we do it together.”
Emily nodded.
They built a plan around the concert hall.
Federal agents.
Hidden microphones.
Remote surveillance.
Charles knew old service corridors.
Samuel placed a tracker inside Emily’s replacement violin case.
Everything seemed ready.
Then Emily asked Charles one final question.
“Why did Mom survive the crash for six hours if Victor wanted her dead?”
Charles’s expression changed.
“What?”
“Dad said she was alive at the hospital.”
Charles looked at Daniel.
“You were with her?”
“Yes.”
“Who was her doctor?”
Daniel searched his memory.
“Dr. Martin Keene.”
Charles went pale.
“Daniel.”
“What?”
“Keene worked for Meridian.”
The crash had not killed Grace.
Grace reached the hospital alive.
She could have survived.
The actual murder happened afterward.
Inside a protected hospital room.
And someone besides Dr. Keene had been there.
Daniel remembered now.
May you like
A visitor came moments before Grace crashed.
Victor Sloane.
