Chapter 7 - The Video Message
Andrew gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles turned completely white.
He realized Emily must have encrypted the evidence she gathered before she was killed.
Sarah slumped against the backseat, desperately asking how they were supposed to unlock a dead woman's files.
Andrew’s mind raced back to the early days of his marriage, before the billions and the glass towers.
Emily was a passionate artist who loved to sculpt with clay and plaster in her private studio.
He remembered a romantic afternoon when she had made a perfect silicone mold of her hands for a bronze casting.
He slammed the brakes, spinning the car around in the middle of the empty street.
He told them he knew exactly where a perfect replica of Emily's fingerprint was sitting gathering dust.
They drove to the outskirts of the city, arriving at the massive, iron gates of Andrew's old marital estate.
He had abandoned the sprawling mansion after her death, leaving it exactly as it was the day she died.
Andrew cut the headlights and bypassed the front gates, knowing Vance would likely have sent men to watch the property.
They snuck through the overgrown gardens in the freezing rain, entering the house through the servant's quarters.
The mansion felt like a tomb, filled with sheet-covered furniture and the heavy silence of lost memories.
Andrew led them up the winding staircase to Emily's sunlit art studio on the third floor.
He rummaged frantically through the dusty boxes of art supplies, his heart pounding with desperate hope.
At the bottom of a wooden crate, his fingers brushed against cold, flexible silicone.
He pulled out the flawless mold of her delicate hand, tears pricking the corners of his eyes.
He hurried back to the car, plugging the flash drive into his laptop on the hood of the vehicle.
With a shaking hand, he pressed the silicone thumb perfectly against the biometric sensor.
A green light flashed, and the encrypted firewall instantly dissolved.
Instead of financial ledgers, the screen immediately maximized a hidden video file.
Emily appeared on the screen, looking exhausted, terrified, and heartbreakingly beautiful.
She stared directly into the camera lens and spoke with a trembling voice.
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She told Andrew that if he was watching this, she was already dead, but he needed to know the truth.
She revealed that Lily had not died in the crash, but had been surgically taken from her by Vance's medical team.
