Chapter 13 - The Return of the Patriarch
The heavy silence that fell over the ruined driveway was heavier than any smart home blackout or corporate betrayal. Marcus stood up slowly from the curb, his legs shaking as he stared at the silver-haired man walking toward them.
"Dad?" Marcus's voice cracked, a pathetic, disbelieving whisper. "You're... you're supposed to be dead. We buried you. I stood at your grave ten years ago."
The old man stopped a few feet away, his gaze shifting briefly to his son before returning to Martha, who stood with her chin held high, holding little Leo securely against her chest.
"I never died, Marcus," Viktor Vance said, his voice steady, carrying the weight of decades of dangerous secrets. "I went underground. The syndicate was hunting us then, and they're hunting us now. The only reason they found you is because you got greedy, building tech startups that connected our secure local node to commercial cloud servers."
Marcus flinched, biting his lower lip as shame washed over his tear-stained face. He couldn't defend himself. Every word was an undeniable truth.
Elena stepped between her father and her mother, her hand resting firmly on the handle of her briefcase, her fingers brushing the cold metal of the flash drive inside her pocket. Her eyes burned with a mixture of fury and desperate need for answers.
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"You let us mourn you," Elena said, her voice shaking with restrained rage. "You let Ma work her fingers to the bone in kitchens and cleaning jobs while you hid behind encrypted
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