Chapter 17 - The Master SwordEighty miles away, in the gleaming glass penthouse of Whitmore Tower in Manhattan, Victoria Whitmore poured herself a glass of two-hundred-dollar champagne.
She stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows, watching the city wake up beneath the morning sun. The physical briefcase sat on her glass coffee table, alongside a raging fire in the modern hearth where she had just burned the physical documents, page by page.
Charles sat in a leather armchair, resting his hands on his silver cane. He looked exhausted, but satisfied.
"It is done," Charles rasped. "The physical evidence is ash. And the boy?"
"Apex Solutions lost track of them after the blast at Blackwood," Victoria said dismissively, taking a sip of champagne. "But they’re irrelevant now, Charles. Without the documents, the housekeeper has nothing but a wild story. The police will think she’s insane. And we have the digital backup."
She gestured to the sleek laptop on the desk, where her lead cybersecurity expert, a nervous man named Dr. Aris, was plugging the micro-SD card into an encrypted reader.
"Have you broken the cipher yet, Aris?" Victoria demanded.
Aris frowned, tapping his screen. "Ma'am, there... there is no cipher."
Victoria’s elegant eyebrows shot up. "What do you mean there's no cipher? Elias’s men said it was military-grade encryption."
"It's not encrypted at all," Aris stammered, sweat breaking out on his forehead. "In fact... it's not even a secure drive. It's formatted in exFAT."
Charles leaned forward, his cane gripping the floor. "Speak English, you idiot. What is on the drive?"
Aris clicked the single folder visible on the screen. He swallowed hard. "Ma'am. The only files on this drive are localized save data for a video game. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Specifically, a save file with ninety hours of gameplay and... and the Master Sword unlocked."
The champagne flute slipped from Victoria’s fingers, shattering against the marble floor.
"What?" she whispered.
She rushed to the laptop, violently pushing Aris out of the way. She stared at the screen. There were no ledgers. No blueprints. No audio files. Just pixelated thumbnails of a video game character.
The realization hit her like a physical blow. The boy. The little paralyzed brat had swapped the cards right in front of her.
"He played you," Charles whispered, his voice trembling with a terrifying, absolute rage. He stood up, knocking his chair back. "A twelve-year-old boy played you, Victoria! Where is the real drive?!"
"I... I don't know," Victoria stammered, backing away from the billionaire. The elegant mask of control had completely evaporated. "They must have it."
Before Charles could scream for his security detail, Victoria’s cell phone buzzed violently on the table. Then Charles’s phone rang. Then Aris’s phone beeped with a news alert.
Charles picked up his phone. It was Arthur Vance, his chief counsel.
"Sir," Vance’s voice was utterly panicked, stripping away his usual dry monotone. "Turn on the news. Any channel. Right now."
Victoria grabbed the remote and turned on the massive flatscreen TV on the wall.
It was CNN. The anchor looked pale, reading from a breaking news prompt. Behind her, a massive graphic displayed the Whitmore Industries logo beneath the word: TREASON.
“...We are receiving an unprecedented data dump simultaneously sent to thousands of journalists and government agencies this morning,” the anchor announced, her voice echoing in the silent penthouse. “The leaked documents appear to show irrefutable proof that Whitmore Industries has been actively funding and arming designated terror organizations. Furthermore, an audio file included in the leak seems to implicate CEO Charles Whitmore and his daughter-in-law, Victoria Whitmore, in the orchestrated murder of Daniel Whitmore...”
The audio file began to play on national television. Charles’s own voice filled the room, ordering his son's death.
Charles staggered backward, clutching his chest. His breathing grew shallow and ragged. "No... no, it's a lie..."
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Victoria didn't look at him. She didn't try to help him. She looked at the door.
The empire was dead. But she wasn't going down with the ship.
