Chapter 9 - The Stranger in My Home
I stared at the jamming device in my wife’s hand, unable to process what I was seeing.
Emily looked completely calm.
The terrified, vulnerable woman who had been bleeding all night was entirely gone.
Her posture was perfect, her eyes were cold, and her hand was completely steady.
I asked her what she was doing.
She did not answer me.
Instead, she pulled a small, suppressed pistol from her waistband and aimed it at Elias.
She ordered him to step away from the computer immediately.
Elias slowly raised his hands and backed away from the desk.
I stepped between Emily and the computer, shielding the old detective.
I pleaded with her, asking why she was protecting Margaret and Vanessa after everything they had done.
Emily let out a sharp, genuine laugh.
She said she didn't care about my family's pathetic little money-laundering operation.
She reached out and canceled the upload to the FBI.
Instead, she routed the transmission to a different, encrypted server address.
She was stealing the ledger data for someone else.
I asked her who she really was.
She looked at me with a hollow expression and said Emily died a long time ago.
She explained that she had endured six years of my family's abuse just to get access to this exact ledger.
My mother's organization had encroached on the territory of a much larger, much deadlier international cartel.
Emily was an operative sent deep undercover to dismantle my mother's empire from the inside out.
She had intentionally provoked Vanessa at Christmas dinner to set this entire chain of events into motion.
The slap, the blood, the flight—it was all a carefully orchestrated operation to force me to find the ledger.
She had used my love for her to destroy my own family.
I looked at Lily, who was waking up and rubbing her eyes.
I asked Emily if our daughter meant anything to her at all.
Emily’s cold exterior cracked for just a fraction of a second.
She whispered that Lily was the only mistake she had ever made.
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Suddenly, the heavy steel door of the bunker exploded inward with a deafening blast.
Vanessa and her heavily armed mercenaries poured into the room, their weapons raised.
