Chapter 19 - The Trojan Horse
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The bunker was silent except for the hum of the ventilation system. The boys were asleep in the adjacent room, guarded by two of Silas’s most trusted men. I sat at the steel table, nursing a glass of cheap bourbon, while Mara and Silas stood across from me, waiting for my answer.
"The Ledger isn't a digital file on a cloud server," I finally confessed, rubbing the bridge of my nose. "Victor’s hackers would have found it years ago if it was connected to the internet. It's a physical hard drive. Heavily encrypted."
"Where is it?" Silas asked, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed.
"I hid it in the one place Victor would never think to look, because it was protected by corporate security, not criminal muscle." I looked at Mara. "I hid it inside your father's corporate headquarters. Inside the main vault of Vance Industries."
Mara’s eyes widened in shock. "You put a mafia ledger inside my father's legitimate business?"
"It was the safest place on earth," I defended myself. "The vault is buried three stories underground. It has biometric locks, seismic sensors, and twenty-four-hour armed guards. It was a fortress."
"It's a liability now," Silas grunted. "If Victor figures out it's there, he won't hesitate to level that building with everyone inside."
Before I could respond, the bunker’s secure communication terminal beeped violently. Silas stepped over to the monitors, his weathered face tightening into a deep scowl.
"What is it?" Mara asked, stepping forward.
"It's a broadcast signal. Someone is hacking into our closed-circuit frequency," Silas muttered, typing rapidly on the keyboard.
The main monitor flickered, the static clearing to reveal a high-definition video feed.
My breath caught in my throat.
The video wasn't showing us Victor. It was showing the front gates of the private elementary school where our quadruplets were supposed to be enrolled next month. But that wasn't the terrifying part.
The camera zoomed in on a woman standing by the playground fence. She was holding a clipboard, smiling at the children playing. It was the woman who had interviewed us for the boys' admission last week.
Suddenly, the woman looked directly into the hidden camera and held up a small whiteboard. Written in black marker were three words:
Tick tock, Julian.
"They infiltrated the school," Mara whispered, her hand covering her mouth. "If we hadn't pulled them out... if we hadn't run..."
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"He was going to take them," I said, a dark, murderous rage boiling in my blood.
The screen went black, replaced by a single line of text: Bring the Ledger to the shipping shipyards at midnight. Come alone. Or the boys burn.
