My husband walked into my hospital room after my near-fatal car accident—not to comfort me, but to demand that I get out of bed and stop costing him money. He tried to drag my broken body home until the door opened and he came face-to-face with the one man he never should have challenged: my father, a hidden special operations officer. / Chapter 32 / 60

Chapter 32 - The Counter-Strike

"System breach! System breach!" an automated female voice repeated over the emergency loudspeakers. "Perimeter fence compromised! Main power grid offline!"

Through the heavy reinforced glass of the study balcony, red emergency flares lit up the dark woods surrounding the estate. Multiple black vehicles were crashing through the iron gates, armed men spilling out onto the lawn.

"They're here," my father said, opening a hidden gun cabinet behind his desk and pulling out tactical weapons. "Victoria Sterling brought her entire personal army."

Elena rushed into the room, her weapon drawn. "The landlines are cut! The cellular jammers are active! We can't call for federal backup!"

"We don't need backup," my father said, handing a tactical rifle to Elena and a suppressed sidearm to me. "This estate was built to survive a siege. Audrey, take the air-gapped terminal in the server room. Activate the Blackout Protocol."

"What does the Blackout Protocol do?" I asked, checking the magazine of the pistol.

"It broadcasts the complete contents of the master ledger to every news network, law enforcement agency, and regulatory body on earth simultaneously," my father explained grimly. "It will destroy the Vanguard forever, but it will also reveal my role in creating it. I will spend the rest of my life in a federal prison."

I looked at my father—the man who had spent twenty years living in the shadows to avenge my mother, the man who had protected me and Chloe at all costs.