Chapter 6 - The Traitor's Blueprint|
Julian collapsed into the wooden chair by the front entrance like a man whose bones had turned to liquid. His polished corporate image was entirely ruined, his expensive suit wrinkled, his tie askew.
"Talk," my father ordered, standing over him, the weapon trained steady on his head.
"It started six months ago," Julian stammered, wiping his sweaty forehead with his sleeve. "A man calling himself 'Mr. Miller' approached me at a business conference in Chicago. He knew everything about my firm's debts, my failed investments... everything. He offered to buy out my liabilities."
"In exchange for what?" I asked, standing beside my father.
"In exchange for putting a digital key drive into your father's old computer in the basement," Julian admitted, looking down at the floor, unable to meet my eyes. "He said it was just corporate intelligence. He said your dad used to work in military procurement and had old patent designs that were worth millions."
"And you believed him?" I asked, my voice laced with venom.
"I didn't care!" Julian burst out, frustration overcoming his fear for a brief second. "We were drowning, Audrey! Your dad sat on millions in that trust and wouldn't give us a dime! We were living in a house we couldn't afford because you refused to go back to work!"
"I left my career because you begged me to stay home with Chloe!" I screamed at him, the pain in my ribs flaring up violently, but I didn't care. "I sacrificed everything so you could play the big-shot corporate executive!"
"Enough," my father cut in sharply, silencing us both. He looked down at Julian. "Where is the key drive now?"
"Miller took it back two weeks ago," Julian whispered. "Right after Audrey's accident. He told me the data was encrypted, and that he needed the physical ledger from the trust vault to unlock it. He said if I brought Audrey home from the hospital, she would have the biometric key to open the vault."
My father's eyes narrowed. "The biometric key isn't in a vault, Julian. It's in her DNA."
I looked at my father in shock. "What?"
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"The ledger isn't a flash drive or a paper file, Audrey," my father said softly, turning to me. "Your mother encoded the decryption sequence into a genetic sequence before she died. The only way Arthur Vance can open that file... is with your blood."
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