Chapter 10 - The Senator’s Ultimatum
Genevieve stared at the tiny screen of the burner phone, her breath catching in her throat. Inside the holding cell, Senator Sterling—a tall, silver-haired politician known for his gleaming public image—leaned over the metal table, his face twisted in a mask of cold desperation.
"You stupid fool, Julian," Senator Sterling hissed, his voice muffled slightly by the low-grade microphone in the corner of the room. "You were supposed to clean out the Berlinsky accounts quietly, not trigger a federal audit that exposed our entire PAC network!"
Julian slumped forward, burying his face in his cuffed hands. "I didn't know Genevieve kept backup drives in her private quantum lab! She outsmarted us!"
"Excuses don't keep you out of a federal supermax, Julian," Sterling snarled, tapping the black ceramic vial resting on the table. "You take full responsibility for the embezzlement, the shell companies, and the forged signatures. You sign an affidavit stating Chloe had zero knowledge of your corporate activities. Do that, and my appellate team will commute your sentence to a minimum-security facility in five years."
And if I don't? Julian asked, his voice shaking.
Sterling’s smile was chilling. "Then you won't survive the night in holding. Heart attacks happen all the time in federal custody, Julian."
In the unmarked sedan, Genevieve gripped the burner phone so tightly her knuckles turned white. She looked up at Marcus, who was watching the live feed with a jaw clenched so tight a muscle ticked in his cheek.
"He's going to murder Julian to protect Chloe," Genevieve whispered, horror washing over her.
"Not if we broadcast this live to every major news network in the country first," Marcus replied calmly, pulling a heavily modified laptop from the back seat and plugging a cryptographic flash drive into the USB port.
"What are you doing?" Genevieve asked.
"Your father set up a dead-man’s switch linked directly to the senate ethics committee and three independent investigative journalists," Marcus said, his fingers flying across the keyboard with blurring speed. "Every wiretap recording, every financial trail, every corrupt communication between Sterling and Vance Global is about to drop into the public domain simultaneously."
Marcus hit the enter key with a definitive strike.
On the screen in front of them, the live video feed of the holding cell suddenly froze for a split second. Then, a loud, piercing feedback squeal echoed from the cell’s intercom speaker. A computerized override voice boomed through the federal precinct: Attention. All transmissions are now being recorded and broadcasted to the Department of Justice.
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Senator Sterling froze mid-sentence, his eyes widening in sheer terror as he stared directly up at the ceiling-mounted security camera, realizing in a single fraction of a second that his political career—and his freedom—had just evaporated into thin air.
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