Chapter 41 - The Ghost in the Machine
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I turned away from the balcony, the chill of the evening rain clinging to the fabric of my silk blouse. Cooper followed close at my heels, sensing the sudden shift in my demeanor. I walked through the cavernous master bedroom and out into the dimly lit hallway of the estate.
My mind raced, replaying Victoria Sterling’s words on an endless loop. My mother, Sarah, a Sovereign of the European Syndicate? It felt like a sick joke. She was a quiet woman who baked pies and read paperback novels on the porch. But in the world of blood and shadows I had inherited, I had quickly learned that the most innocent faces hid the darkest, most dangerous secrets.
I marched toward the grand staircase.
"Elias!" I called out, my voice echoing sharply through the silent mansion.
Seconds later, my head of security emerged from the shadows of the lower foyer. Elias was a towering, rugged man, built like a concrete pillar, with sharp eyes that missed absolutely nothing. He had been my father’s most trusted enforcer, and now, he was mine.
"Boss?" Elias asked, seeing the lethal expression on my face. "We have a problem?"
"We have a ghost," I said, descending the stairs quickly. "Get Jax on the encrypted line immediately. We need the war room."
We bypassed the wine cellar and entered the fortified underground bunker beneath the estate. Jax, my brilliant and perpetually unkempt tech specialist, was already on the massive flat-screen monitor, surrounded by glowing code.
"You rang, Sovereign?" Jax asked, chewing loudly on a piece of red licorice. "It’s past midnight. What's the emergency?"
"I need you to run a trace on a satellite call I received ten minutes ago," I said, tossing my encrypted phone onto the steel table. "Origin Zurich. The caller identified herself as Victoria Sterling."
Jax stopped chewing. His fingers froze over his mechanical keyboard.
"Victoria Sterling?" Jax repeated, his voice losing all its usual playful sarcasm. "Emily, you do not mess with the Sterling family. They own half the untraceable banks in Switzerland and control the European underworld with an iron fist. They make Marcus Kane look like a petty shoplifter."
"I don't care who they make him look like," I said coldly, crossing my arms. "She claimed my mother was a European Sovereign. I want everything you can find on Sterling, and I want it ten minutes ago."
"I’m running the trace," Jax muttered, his eyes darting across his screens as lines of red code cascaded down. "The encryption is heavy. Military grade. Wait... Emily, something’s wrong."
"What is it?" Elias asked, his hand instinctively dropping to his sidearm.
"The signal wasn't just a phone call," Jax said, his face paling under the monitor's glow. "It was a ping. A geolocation tag. By answering that phone, you just broadcasted the exact coordinates of your estate to a secondary server."
My blood ran cold.
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"Who owns the secondary server?" I demanded.
"A private mercenary contractor," Jax replied, typing frantically. "Boss, they aren't just calling to say hello. They’re already inside your perimeter."
