Chapter 7 - Collateral Damage.Julian was sitting in a cinderblock holding cell, shivering in an oversized orange jumpsuit that clashed violently with his pampered lifestyle.
I stood on the other side of the reinforced glass, watching him pace back and forth like a caged, terrified animal.
When he finally noticed me standing there, he lunged at the glass, his hands slamming against the impenetrable barrier.
“You did this to me, Celeste!” he screamed, his voice muffled but dripping with absolute hysteria.
I picked up the black telephone receiver mounted on the wall and waited for him to do the same.
His hand was trembling so violently he could barely hold the plastic phone to his ear.
“I didn't wire five million dollars to Eastern European hitmen, Julian,” I said quietly, my voice devoid of any sympathy.
“Dad told me to do it!” Julian sobbed, the tough-guy facade crumbling into a pathetic display of cowardice.
“Arthur told me that if we didn't silence you, the board of directors would strip us of the company and throw us to the feds,” he confessed.
“He used you as a firewall, Julian,” I explained, watching the devastating truth slowly wash over my brother’s tear-stained face.
“If the hit succeeded, the problem was solved; if it failed, you were the one who signed the wire transfer, not him.”
Julian collapsed into the metal chair bolted to the floor, burying his face in his hands as the betrayal settled into his bones.
“He left me here,” Julian whispered, his voice cracking under the immense weight of our father's ruthlessness.
“His lawyers haven't even called; they abandoned me the second the FBI traced the routing numbers back to my personal account.”
I leaned closer to the glass, pressing my scarred palm against the cold surface.
“I can get the prosecutor to offer you a plea deal, Julian, but you have to give me the ledger.”
Every illegal transaction, every bribed official, and every black-market weapons deal was meticulously recorded on a localized, offline server.
Julian looked up, his eyes bloodshot and filled with a desperate, lingering fear of the man who had raised us.
“It’s not at the corporate headquarters, Celeste,” he whispered into the receiver, glancing nervously at the security camera in the corner.
“He moved the master drives to a heavily fortified private data center in the financial district last week.”
He recited the address and the biometric override codes from memory, desperate to save himself from a life behind bars.
“If you go there, you have to be careful,” Julian warned, a rare moment of genuine brotherly concern breaking through his panic.
“Dad didn't just hire external mercenaries; he kept the most lethal ones on the payroll as internal security.”
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I hung up the phone without another word, turning my back on the brother who had tried to kill me.
I had the location of the final nail in Arthur Vance's coffin, and I was going to hammer it in myself.
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