Chapter 10
Julian crouched down beside Clara’s chair, his anger entirely redirected from his daughter to the woman waiting inside the mansion. The protective instincts that had made him a titan in the boardroom now surged forward, focused on a battle for survival within his own home. He reached out, gently taking one of her bandaged hands in his, ignoring the dirt and the dried blood. “Listen to me very carefully, Clara. We are done running, and we are done playing by her rules,” Julian said, his voice a low, steady rumble that brook no argument. Clara looked into his eyes, seeing a hardened resolve that gave her a small spark of hope for the first time in weeks. “What are we going to do? She has copies of everything in the cloud, Daddy. I saw her uploading them to an external server last night,” Clara whispered anxiously. Julian stood up, towering over the patio table as he formulated a rapid, high-stakes counter-plan. “Let her think she’s winning. Let her think the transfer is going through without a hitch,” Julian instructed, his mind racing through digital security protocols and asset freezes he could initiate from his phone the moment he had physical control of the master router. “While she’s packing her final bags this afternoon, I’m going to lock down every account she touches and pull the server logs from the house network. She thinks she’s the only predator in this house, but she forgot who built the cage.” Clara swallowed hard, wiping her cheeks with her good hand, and nodded in grim agreement. As Julian turned toward the heavy double doors to re-enter the mansion, he knew there was no turning back. The fragile peace of the estate was permanently shattered, and the final, brutal phase of the war for their lives was about to begin inside the air-conditioned silence of the master study.
