Chapter 10 - The Final Audit
I used a heavy screwdriver from my toolbelt to pry the rusted lock open.
I expected to find old family jewelry or forgotten savings bonds.
Instead, the box was filled with detailed blueprints of Fort Meade’s highly classified underground servers.
My heart began to pound heavily against my ribs as I sifted through the yellowed documents.
My father had been a civilian architect who died in a car crash when I was just a teenager.
He was never supposed to have access to this kind of restricted military information.
Beneath the blueprints was a thick stack of coded ledgers dating back twenty years.
The handwriting on the ledgers was identical to the offshore accounts Ryan had created.
I pulled out a faded Polaroid photograph hidden at the very bottom of the pile.
It was a picture of my father smiling brightly at a clandestine meeting in a dark restaurant.
Sitting across the table, shaking my father's hand, was a very young General Vance.
And standing in the background, holding a briefcase, was a twenty-year-old Ryan.
This meant Ryan had not met me by accident at a coffee shop fifteen years ago.
He had been carefully planted in my life by the syndicate my own father had helped create.
My father was the original architect of the embezzlement ring.
I stared at the photograph, the weight of the realization crushing the air from my lungs.
My mother called up the attic stairs, asking if I wanted a glass of iced tea.
I quickly shoved the photograph into my pocket and closed the metal box.
I walked down the stairs, smiling at the woman who had lied to me for my entire life.
She handed me a cold glass of tea and patted my cheek affectionately.
"Is everything alright upstairs, sweetheart?" she asked with a sweet, innocent smile.
I took a sip of the tea, my mind racing with a terrifying new mission.
"Everything is perfect, Mom," I replied.
May you like
As she turned around to walk back to the garden, my phone buzzed with an encrypted text message from an unknown number.
The message read, "Your father’s debt is still unpaid, Colonel—and we are coming to collect."
