Chapter 9 - The Reckoning
The progress bar on the massive laptop screen turned from vibrant blue to blazing crimson.
A single word flashed across the monitors in the boardroom: CORRUPTED.
"No!" Vanessa screamed, lunging across the conference table with her hands outstretched.
She furiously pounded on the keys, but the terminal began executing a hard-drive zeroing command.
The blue indicator lights on the external drives turned solid red, then went completely dark.
"What did you do?" Vanessa shrieked, her manicured nails digging into the mahogany wood.
"That code was worth six hundred million dollars!"
"Those buyers will slaughter me if I don't deliver by midnight!"
"Then you had better start running, Vanessa," I said quietly.
The double doors of the boardroom burst open with violent force.
Arthur Vance stumbled into the room, his clothes drenched in chemical foam, his weapon drawn.
"Arthur, shoot her!" Vanessa screamed, losing all semblance of sanity.
"Shoot her now!"
Arthur raised the pistol toward me, his hands shaking with rage and exhaustion.
"It's over, Claire," Arthur rasped.
"If I'm going down, your father's legacy dies with me."
Before Arthur could squeeze the trigger, Daniel threw his entire body weight forward.
He didn't do it out of heroism; he did it out of absolute, terrified desperation to save his own skin.
Daniel crashed into Arthur, sending both men sprawling violently across the polished hardwood floor.
The pistol discharged once into the ceiling, shattering a thousand crystal droplets from the chandelier.
The gun skittered across the floor, stopping directly at my feet.
I didn't pick it up.
I didn't need to.
From the hallway, the heavy tactical boots of thirty federal law enforcement officers echoed like thunder.
Miriam Shaw stepped through the shattered doorway, flanked by the Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
"Federal agents!" the lead officer bellowed, weapons raised.
"Step away from the consoles and put your hands behind your heads!"
Arthur stopped fighting instantly, his face pressed against the floor as cold steel handcuffs snapped around his wrists.
Daniel lay sobbing beside him, curling into a fetal position, begging the agents to believe he was an innocent hostage.
Two federal agents seized Vanessa by her scarlet lapels, yanking her hands behind her back.
The diamond ring—my mother's teardrop diamond—flashed under the fluorescent lights as they pinned her against the glass.
"Claire Whitmore," the FBI Director said, turning toward me and nodding with grim respect.
"Your encrypted data packet cleared our financial crimes division fifteen minutes ago."
"The offshore accounts have been seized, and the foreign buyers were picked up in London twenty minutes ago."
Vanessa turned her head, spitting hair from her face, glaring at me with raw, unadulterated hatred.
"You're nothing without your father's ghost, Claire!" Vanessa spat as they dragged her backward toward the elevator.
"You will always be a lonely, pathetic little girl!"
I adjusted my coat and looked directly into her ruined face.
May you like
"My father built the company, Vanessa," I said softly.
"But I am the one who owns it."
