Chapter 12 - The Partnership Exposed
Adrian stared at Detective Vance in stunned silence, his mind struggling to process the betrayal unfolding right in front of him.
"You..." Adrian whispered, taking a slow step backward until his legs hit the edge of a leather table. "You're working with him."
"Working with him? Adrian, Vance is my head of internal security," Marcus Sterling corrected smoothly, refilling his glass of bourbon. "Local police departments are terribly underfunded these days. It’s remarkably easy to put a badge on a trusted operative and plant him in the precinct."
"You lied to me about everything," Adrian said, his voice cracking with a mixture of rage and profound heartbreak. "Every word in that hospital, every warning... it was all part of the play."
"It was theater, Adrian, and you played your part brilliantly," Vance said, walking over to stand beside Sterling and resting a hand on the back of the billionaire's chair. "We needed you to panic. We needed you to run, to grab the recorder from the SUV, and to bring it right to us. You see, the digital file you downloaded isn't an audit report. It's a master decryption key for our offshore accounts—and you were the only one with the biometric clearance to activate it."
Adrian looked over at Clara, who was shaking her head violently, tears streaming down her face as she finally managed to spit the gag out of her mouth.
"Don't do it, Adrian! Don't give it to them!" Clara screamed, struggling against her ropes.
"Shut her up," Sterling commanded softly, and one of the armed guards immediately stepped forward, pressing a fresh cloth gag back over her face.
Adrian lunged forward with a roar of pure fury, throwing a wild punch toward Sterling's face. But Vance was too fast. He stepped inside the punch, swept Adrian's legs out from under him, and drove him hard into the carpeted floor, pressing a heavy knee into his spine and pinning his arms behind his back.
"Save your energy, Adrian," Vance murmured into his ear, clicking a pair of cold steel handcuffs around his wrists. "You can't fight a system that owns the board."
Sterling stood up, walking over to the mahogany table and picking up the digital recorder. He plugged it into a master console built into the cabin wall, watching as a green loading bar began to creep slowly across the main display monitor.
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"Download complete in three minutes," Sterling announced, smiling coldly. "And once it hits one hundred percent, this plane will cross international airspace, and none of this will ever matter again."
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