Chapter 9 - The Truth Revealed
Leonard did not look at the glowing screens at all, but instead kept his silver eyes locked perfectly and lovingly on Aria.
He coughed violently, tightly gripping his bleeding side as he leaned heavily against the completely shattered doorframe.
"I did not kill your parents, Aria, I was secretly desperately trying to protect them," Leonard gasped heavily through the intense pain.
He painfully pulled a slightly crushed USB drive from his torn suit jacket and tossed it gently to Aria on the floor.
Aria quickly plugged the drive into the nearest functioning terminal, her elegant fingers flying desperately across the mechanical keyboard.
A hidden, perfectly clear audio recording began playing incredibly loudly through the security room's main overhead speakers.
It was a recorded conversation directly between Marcus Voss and Julian, captured just three short days before this charity gala.
"I forged the Harrington financial records perfectly, Julian, so you can comfortably kill Leonard without any guilt," Marcus's recorded voice echoed clearly.
Julian froze completely in absolute shock, his arrogant, violent confidence entirely vanishing in a single, devastating instant.
He realized with horrifying, crystal clarity that Marcus had manipulated him perfectly into hunting an innocent man for eight years.
Leonard had actually adopted Aria solely to fiercely protect her from the Voss syndicate's relentless, highly trained assassins.
"I have spent my entire miserable life trying to destroy the only man who truly cared about you," Julian whispered in profound agony.
Suddenly, a heavy, terrifying metallic clank echoed very loudly from the ventilation shafts directly above their heads.
Marcus Voss had somehow escaped the ballroom chaos and found the central life support controls for the underground bunker.
A thick, highly toxic greenish-yellow gas began pouring rapidly from the ceiling vents into the locked security room.
"You are all going to die down here together like trapped, pathetic rats," Marcus laughed wildly through the emergency intercom system.
Aria began coughing violently as the deadly, burning gas rapidly filled her delicate lungs.
Julian desperately tried to hack the ventilation controls, but the system had been completely fried by the earlier explosion.
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"The only way to forcefully vent the gas is to initiate a catastrophic overload of the mainframe core," Aria choked out through the smoke.
If she triggered the overload, the resulting massive electrical explosion could easily kill every single person trapped inside the tiny room.
