Chapter 6 - The Trap is Set
Julian Vance stood up abruptly, pulling a heavy silver pen from his jacket as if it were a weapon, his face tight with corporate panic. "Crowe! You're trespassing on private charter property! If you take one step closer—"
"Shut up, Julian," I said, not even looking at him. My eyes remained locked on Victoria, who was shrinking back against the leather sofa, clutching her mink coat around herself like a shield.
"Nathaniel... please," she stammered, her voice dropping into that soft, helpless pitch she had used whenever she wanted to manipulate me. "You don't understand... they forced me to do this... Sterling threatened my family..."
"You don't have a family, Victoria," I replied coldly, stepping toward the table. "You have a record in Zurich, three fake passports in a safety deposit box in Frankfurt, and a warrant pending in Singapore."
I reached out and slowly picked up the silver music box from the table. I wiped a speck of dust off its engraved lid—Evelyn’s initials—and placed it carefully into my coat pocket.
"You locked my children in a dark room," I said, my voice dangerously quiet. "You told my seven-year-old daughter that I didn't love her. You put drugs in my three-year-old son's drink."
Victoria swallowed hard, her eyes darting frantically toward the glass window, looking for an escape that didn't exist. "It... it was just a mild sedative... he wasn't hurt..."
"If you ever speak their names again, I will make sure you spend the rest of your life in a federal facility where you'll never see daylight," I told her.
Julian tried to slide the stolen flash drive into his laptop. "Look, Crowe, whatever domestic dispute you have with your wife, Mr. Sterling has a binding financial agreement—"
"Plug it in, Julian," I said, turning to face him with a cold smile. "Go ahead. Insert the drive."
Julian hesitated, his thumb hovering over the USB port. "What?"
"That drive contains Protocol Zero," I explained, leaning over the table. "The moment it touches your machine, it routes through Sterling’s private server in Manhattan. It instantly notifies the SEC, the FBI Cyber Division, and the Department of Justice that Arthur Sterling is actively receiving stolen military-grade corporate encryption keys from a fugitive asset stripper."
Julian’s face went completely pale. He pulled his hand back from the laptop as if the drive were radioactively hot. "You... you trapped the drive?"
"I built the system, Julian," I said softly. "Did you really think a woman who bought her credentials off the dark web could outsmart the man who designed national security logistics?"
Suddenly, the heavy double doors of the hangar were thrown open from the outside.
Red and blue police lights strobed violently through the rain, reflecting off the wet pavement. Sirens wailed across the tarmac as eight federal vehicles pulled directly into the hangar bay, blocking every vehicle. FBI tactical agents spilled out, firearms raised, screaming commands.
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Victoria gasped, dropping to her knees on the floor. "No... no, no, no!"
"I told you in New Jersey, Victoria," I said, stepping past her as the agents rushed up the stairs. "True power isn't contracts or money. It's what happens after everything you relied on fails."
