Chapter 7
The door clicked shut, leaving Julian and Chloe alone in the vast penthouse office. The tension in the room was palpable, thick enough to choke on. Julian stared at the closed door, his fists clenched so tightly his knuckles turned white.
"He’s playing us," Julian muttered, pacing toward the window. "Marcus is a coward. He’s trying to buy an exit strategy before the board uncovers his embezzlement."
"What if he’s telling the truth about the syndicate?" Chloe asked, her voice trembling slightly as she stepped closer to her brother. "Julian, if dangerous people were involved in our parents' death... we can't just ignore it. But we can't walk into a trap either."
Julian stopped pacing and looked at her, the hard anger in his eyes softening into a deep, agonizing guilt. "I brought you into this. The moment I grabbed your wrist in that ballroom, I dragged you back into the crosshairs of a war I’ve been fighting alone for twenty years. I should have protected you, kept you hidden until I had all the pieces."
"You didn't drag me anywhere," Chloe said firmly, stepping right up to him and placing a hand on his arm. She felt the heavy metal of his silver bracelet pressing against her own, the matching symbols locking them together. "I spent my whole life feeling like a ghost, wandering through places I didn't belong, wondering why I was alone. Now I have a family. We face this together, Julian. No more secrets, no more hiding."
Julian looked down at her hand on his arm, a complex mixture of pride and sorrow washing over his face. He nodded slowly. "Together. Okay. If Marcus has a ledger, we aren't going to wait for him to trade it. We’re going to find it ourselves."
"How?" Chloe asked. "He said it's in an off-site vault."
"Marcus is arrogant, but he’s creatures of habit," Julian explained, moving back to his desk and opening a secure terminal. "He uses a private Swiss depository downtown for his personal assets—the kind of place high-net-worth individuals use to hide offshore accounts from their spouses and tax auditors. If the ledger exists, that’s where it is."
"Can we hack it?"
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"We don't need to hack it," Julian said with a grim smile, pulling up a digital floor plan of the depository. "We just need to intercept him before he gets there. If Marcus thinks he can play us against an unknown syndicate, he’s about to find out that a cornered brother is much more dangerous than corporate politics."
***
