Chapter 37 - The Data Heist
Victor’s breathing grew shallow and ragged. The cold barrel of the gun pressed against his skin was a stark reality check. The man who had orchestrated assassinations and corporate takeovers from the safety of boardrooms was now begging for his life in the back of a van.
"Please," Victor stammered, a pathetic, desperate whine escaping his throat. "I'll call them off. I swear to God, I'll call them off."
"You are going to do much more than that," Emily commanded. She reached into her tactical vest and pulled out a small, encrypted hard drive Sarah had prepared.
"Plug this into your primary terminal," Emily ordered, tossing the drive onto his lap. "And bypass the biometric firewalls. Now."
Victor hesitated for a fraction of a second, his eyes shifting toward a hidden compartment near his leg.
"If you even think about reaching for a weapon, Victor, I will blow your kneecap off and let you bleed out on the floorboards," Emily promised, her finger tightening visibly on the trigger.
Victor swallowed hard, abandoning his desperate plan. With trembling hands, he plugged the drive into the massive server rack mounted in the SUV. He placed his thumb on the biometric scanner, and the screen flashed green. Access Granted.
"Sarah, I have the terminal," Emily spoke quietly into her earpiece. "Are you in?"
"I'm in, Emily," Sarah’s voice replied, the excitement evident even through the static. "I am downloading his entire shadow ledger. I have his offshore accounts, his cartel bribes, his assassination contracts, and the names of every corrupt police chief on his payroll. I am draining him completely dry."
Victor watched in absolute horror as the command screens rapidly deleted his life’s work. The vast, untouchable Sterling empire was evaporating before his eyes, stolen by a few lines of code.
"You're dead," Victor hissed, a tear of sheer frustration rolling down his cheek. "The cartels will hunt you to the ends of the earth for taking their money."
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"Oh, Victor," Emily smiled a cold, devastating smile. "I'm not taking their money. I'm routing it directly to the Mexican federal government as an anonymous donation. But the cartels won't know that. They will only know that you lost it."
Victor’s face drained of all color. He was a dead man walking.
