Chapter 199 Chapter one hundred and ninety-nine

Chapter 199 Chapter one hundred and ninety-nine
Sebestian's POV

The mobile command trailer parked near the edge of the industrial site hummed with the steady, dull drone of high-powered servers and portable generators. Rain lashed mercilessly against the metal roof, but inside, the air was warm, sterile, and choked with the smell of stale coffee and damp wool.

I stood leaning over the central tactical table, my knuckles pressed so hard into the laminated map of the eastern ridge that my hands were completely numb.

"We’ve got the primary digital origin point, Detective," a young cybercrime technician said, hitting a key on his console. A series of complex network nodes and corporate ownership chains flashed onto the large overhead monitor. "The military-grade signal repeater used to spoof Mr. Lancaster’s cell phone wasn't just rented off a dark-web server. It was purchased outright fourteen months ago by a logistics shell company called Aetheris Holdings."

Detective Miller stepped closer to the screen, his sharp eyes scanning the lines of text. "Where is Aetheris registered?"

"Grand Cayman," the tech replied, typing rapidly. "Standard layered offshore holding structure. But the physical hardware maintenance contract for that repeater was paid using a recurring wire transfer from a private commercial account at Apex Global Bank."

"Can you pull the signatory on the Apex account?" Miller asked, his voice low and cautious.
"We don't have to," a quiet, trembling voice said from the doorway of the trailer.

I turned my head slowly. Avery was standing at the threshold, her rain-soaked coat dripping onto the rubber floor. Standing directly behind her, looking deathly pale and clutching a leather folder tightly to her chest, was Sienna.

Sienna took two hesitant steps into the fluorescent light of the trailer. She looked entirely unraveled—her usual corporate polish gone, her hair damp, her eyes wide with a deep, suffocating terror.

"Sienna?" I asked, my brow furrowing in confusion, my voice raspy and hoarse. "What are you doing down here? Does Wes know you left the office?"
Sienna didn't look at me. She couldn't. She kept her eyes fixed on Avery, her lower lip trembling so violently she had to bite it to keep from sobbing.

"He doesn't know," Sienna whispered, her voice barely audible over the hum of the servers. "I... I can't do this anymore, Mr. Lancaster. I can't sit at my desk pretending I don't see what's happening. I can't live with it."

Miller stepped forward instantly, his demeanor shifting into sharp, intense focus. "Ms. Rowie, What do you have?"

Sienna lifted her trembling hands and placed the heavy leather folder onto the tactical table right in front of me. She opened it, revealing a thick stack of printed internal corporate access logs, encrypted network signatures, and private account authorizations stamped with the Lancaster Group's executive seal.

"Aetheris Holdings isn't an outside vendor," Sienna said, her voice cracking as a single tear escaped her eye and tracked down her pale cheek. "It’s a secondary off-ledger acquisition firm created during the overseas restructuring last year. There are only two people in the entire company who hold master administrative credentials to those offshore Apex accounts."

She finally turned her tear-filled eyes to mine, looking at me with a profound, agonized pity that made my stomach plunge into a cold, bottomless void.

"One of those credentials belongs to you, Mr. Lancaster," Sienna choked out. "And the other... the master key that authorized the payment for that signal repeater forty-eight hours ago... belongs to Wes."

The room seemed to freeze. The hum of the generators, the drumming of the rain on the roof, the quiet murmur of the technicians—everything vanished into a terrifying, suffocating vacuum.

I looked down at the paper sitting beneath the bright LED lights. There, printed in clean, black ink beside the cryptographic security key for Aetheris Holdings, was my son's executive user ID.

W. LANCASTER. AUTHORIZED.

A sudden, violent wave of disbelief surged through my blood, hot and blinding.

"No," I said instantly, my voice sharp, rigid, and commanding. I pushed the folder away, shaking my head violently. "No. That's a mistake. This is a mistake, Miller."

"Mr. Lancaster—" Miller began gently.

"No!" I shouted, slamming my palm down onto the table so hard the monitors rattled. The raw, desperate fury in my voice echoed off the metal walls.

"Someone hacked his credentials! Someone is framing him! Wes has been working eighty hours a week! He’s been coordinating with your department! He brought in private search teams! He’s out there right now funding the search for my fiancée!"

I grabbed the lapels of my wet coat, my chest heaving, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped beast.

"Wes loves Lena!" I roared, my eyes burning as I glared at Sienna, desperately searching her face for the lie. "

He welcomed her into our home when we got engaged! He held an umbrella over my head in the freezing rain three hours ago! He stood in the mud with me, holding me together while I was falling apart! He is my son!"

"Mr. Lancaster," Detective Miller said quietly, pulling a second file from his jacket with a tragic, unshakeable gravity. "Ten minutes ago, our digital forensics unit cross-referenced the GPS tracker on the vehicle that dropped the spoofed signal near the ridge.
The encrypted SIM card inside that repeater pinged a local cell tower in the North Ridge sector at 6:14 PM on Tuesday. At that exact second, Wes’s personal vehicle passed beneath that tower's toll camera."

Miller laid three high-definition photographic stills onto the desk, showing Wes's clear profile behind the wheel of his dark SUV.

I stared down at the photographs.
My breathing came in short, jagged, suffocating gasps. The denial didn't fade gradually. It collapsed all at once, shattering my world into millions of razor-sharp shards.

He held the umbrella.
Hours ago... in the freezing rain... he had stood beside me in the mud. He had held the umbrella over my head. He had rubbed my shoulder and told me we were going to find her. And all the while... he knew where she was. He had put her there.

My legs simply gave out.
A guttural, agonizing sound tore from my throat. I hit the rubber floor on my knees, my hands clutching my head, my fingers digging viciously into my hair as a wave of violent, chest-heaving sobs wracked my body.

"No... no... no..." I wept hysterically, my face pressed against my knees. "Not Wes... oh God, please, not my boy... not Wes..."

Every memory of him—his university graduation, his proud smile when I named him Chief Operating Officer, his quiet advice—was instantly corrupted, poisoned by the terrifying realization that it had all been a sociopathic play.

Suddenly, Avery dropped to her knees beside me on the floor. Her hands were shaking uncontrollably, her face pale with a shock of her own that mirrored my heartbreak.

She wrapped her arms tightly around my shoulders, holding me as tears spilled freely down her face.

"Sebastian... listen to me," Avery choked out, her voice trembling violently with raw, overwhelmed disbelief. "I... I can't wrap my head around this either. I've known Wes since university. I watched him and Lena date for years in college. I saw how soft he was with her back then... I saw him at her campus events... I would have sworn on my life he was incapable of something like this."

She squeezed my arms tightly, her voice cracking as she fought back her own wave of panic and confusion.
"It feels like a nightmare, Sebastian. It doesn't make any sense to me either," Avery cried softly, pressing her forehead against my arm. "I find it so hard to
believe it’s him... I don't want to believe it's Wes..."

She paused, taking a sharp, ragged breath, pulling back just enough to force me to look into her tear-filled, fiercely determined eyes.

"But right now... right now none of that matters," Avery said, her tone suddenly hardening into an unshakeable, grounding blade of resolve. "We cannot break down and try to make sense of Wes right now, Sebastian. Whoever is behind this—whether it's Wes or some twisted version of him—we will deal with the culprit later. We will get our answers later. But first, we have to get Lena back."

Her words pierced through the dark, suffocating fog of my heartbreak.

"Lena is locked in a room somewhere out there, waiting for us," Avery pressed, wiping her tear-stained cheeks with the back of her wet coat. "She is terrified, and she needs you. Your baby needs you. We focus on saving Lena first, Sebastian. Everything else comes after."

Avery’s grounding words struck the tiny, burning ember of duty left inside me. Lena. My unborn child. They were trapped, and every second I spent weeping on the floor was a second lost.

I wiped my eyes with my trembling, mud-stained hand, taking a long, ragged breath that rattled in my chest.
Slowly, painfully, I pulled myself up from the floor, using the edge of the tactical table to steady my shaking legs. Miller stood watching me with grave respect, his hand resting near his radio.

"Where is he, Miller?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper, hollowed out, but steadying into something cold and dark. "Where is he?"

"We’re running an emergency ping on his official mobile device right now," Miller said, turning to his tech crew.

I stood there, my mind still desperately clawing at the microscopic chance that there was some explanation, some unfathomable nightmare where my son wasn't a monster. My hand reached into my coat pocket, pulling out my phone with trembling fingers.

I need to hear his voice, my mind whispered in a pitiful final plea. I need him to answer and tell me it's not true.
Ignoring the detective's warning glare, I unlocked my screen, went to my contacts, and dialed Wes’s personal line.

I pressed the phone to my ear, listening to the silence of the line, holding my breath, my heart pounding so hard I thought my ribs would snap.
Ring.
Nothing.
Ring.
A harsh, automated metallic tone suddenly cut through the speaker:

"The cellular device you are attempting to reach has been powered off or is no longer connected to the network. Error code 4-0-4."

He had killed the phone. He had dropped the mask. He knew the net was closing in.
I slowly lowered the phone from my ear, staring at the dark screen. The final thread of hope snapped quietly into dust.

"He turned it off," I said, my voice completely devoid of emotion, cold and empty as a grave.
"Detective!" the tech yelled suddenly, staring at his monitor as a red beacon began flashing near the upper ridge map. "We didn't get his phone, but we just intercepted a high-frequency security alarm triggered on a private residential property in the North Ridge estate grid! A silent panic signal went off two minutes ago!"

Miller leaned over the screen. "Who owns that property?"

Sienna stepped forward, her face ghastly pale. "It’s a private holding company," she whispered. "Wes built it last year. It’s a secured estate."

I looked at Detective Miller, my eyes cold, clear, and lethal, the tears on my cheeks drying in the cool air of the trailer.

"Deploy your teams, Detective," I said, my voice a blade of pure steel. "We’re going to my son's residence."