Chapter 23 - The Wrath of the Mother
Frank and my father arrived at the panic room a moment later, their flashlights cutting sharp beams through the heavy, oppressive gloom. Frank took one look at the fallen guards and the empty room, his jaw tightening into a hard, unforgiving line of absolute professional shame.
"They bypassed the biometric lock," Frank said, examining the keypad with a gloved finger. "They didn't force it. They used a military-grade code-injection tool. Someone inside our network gave them the override sequence."
"Who?" My voice was terrifyingly calm now. The grief, the panic, the overwhelming terror had burned away in the furnace of my fury, leaving behind something cold, razor-sharp, and utterly lethal.
"There's only one person who had access to the master security protocols besides myself and Arthur," Frank said slowly, looking up with grim realization. "The head of our IT infrastructure. Marcus Vance—Carter’s cousin."
"Marcus," my father growled, his eyes narrowing into slits of pure venom. "The rat we let crawl into the basement years ago thinking he was harmless."
"He's not harmless anymore," I stood up, sliding my pistol back into its holster and picking up an assault rifle from one of the fallen guards. I checked the chamber, racking a heavy round into place with a definitive *clack*. "He’s dead. And so is Julian."
"Claire, wait," my father grabbed my arm, his grip surprisingly strong despite his injuries. "Julian is a ghost. He knows every inch of the coastline from here to Montreal. If you walk into that lighthouse alone, you're walking straight into an execution chamber."
"Let him try to execute me," I replied, looking straight into my father's eyes. "Julian wants the Bradford ledger. He wants the offshore accounts. He thinks he can use my son as leverage to break me. He doesn't understand the fundamental mistake he just made."
"What mistake is that?" Frank asked.
"He took my child," I said softly, the words dropping like lead weights into the silence of the room. "And when you take a mother's child, you don't start a war. You sign your own death warrant."
I turned on my heel and walked out of the panic room, my mind racing through every tactical asset we had left. The old lighthouse at Stony Point was a crumbling stone relic perched on a jagged cliff overlooking Lake Ontario, three miles north of the estate. It had underground maintenance tunnels, narrow stairwells, and zero cellular reception—the perfect killing field for a man like Julian Vance.
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"Frank," I called back over my shoulder without breaking stride. "Prep the armored SUV and the thermal drones. If Julian wants the ledger, I'll give him a ledger written in blood."
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