Chapter 8
The heavy oak doors of the boardroom rebounded off the reinforced walls with a deafening crash, drawing every eye away from Julian and the execution papers. Security Guard Vance—no relation, but a twenty-year veteran of the corporate security detail—stumbled into the room, his uniform cap askew and his breathing ragged.
"Mr. Vance," the guard panted, gripping the back of an empty chair for balance. "You need to lock down the building immediately. The primary server vault on the sub-level has just been breached."
Julian dropped his pen onto the granite table, the metallic clatter sounding like a gunshot in the silent room. "Breached? How? The biometric locks require dual-key authentication from both myself and the head of IT."
"They didn't use biometric authentication, sir," the guard replied, wiping sweat from his forehead. "Someone deployed a localized EMP pulse at the main breaker junction in the basement. It fried the digital locks, and the physical override codes were entered manually from a terminal inside the executive bunker."
Marcus Thorne stood up so fast his chair tipped over backward, crashing loudly against the floor. "The executive bunker? Only three people on Earth know the manual override sequence for that bunker: Arthur Vance, Eleanor Vance, and... myself."
Eleanor turned away from the window, her lips curving into a slow, terrifyingly confident smile. The panic that had flickered in her eyes moments before was entirely gone, replaced by a dark, knowing amusement.
"You see, Julian?" Eleanor said smoothly, walking slowly toward the center of the room. "You thought cutting off my voting rights would stop the bleeding. You thought you had won control of an empire. But you don't even know what your grandfather built beneath our feet."
Julian ignored his mother, rushing past the guard toward the boardroom exit. "Call the local precinct, Marcus. Tell Miller to dispatch tactical units to the sub-level immediately."
"It's already too late, Mr. Vance," the guard warned, grabbing Julian's arm. "The terminal downstairs isn't just downloading corporate ledgers. It’s executing a total factory reset on the global logistics network. Every cargo ship, every automated warehouse, and every supply chain database we own is currently being wiped clean and redirected to an un-traceable offshore server."
Amy clutched Lily tightly, her heart pounding against her ribs as she stood up from the corner armchair. "Julian, if they wipe the network, the company collapses entirely within the hour. Everything—all of it—will be gone."
Julian looked back at Eleanor, his face contorted with a mixture of fury and disbelief. "Who is down there, Mother? Who else has the override codes?"
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Eleanor laughed softly, a cold, haunting sound that sent a chill through every director in the room. "Someone you thought was safely buried six feet under three years ago, Julian. Someone who realized that in the Vance family, death is merely a very convenient corporate restructuring."
Henderson gasped, gripping the edge of the conference table as his face turned pale. "My God... Arthur’s younger brother, Charles. We thought he died in that plane crash off the coast of Marseille."
