Chapter 317

Chapter 317

A few days later, Juliana and Lucas went to the hospital together.

Milo had lost a shocking amount of weight. His eyes were sunken, but his spirits seemed decent. When he saw them, he only nodded—his version of a greeting.

Juliana walked to the bedside and carefully checked the data on the monitors, then flipped through the nursing records at the head of the bed. All the vital signs were stable. The records were incredibly detailed, even including daily ventilation times and light exposure duration.

Lucas appeared beside him at some point and handed him a document.

"The equity in those companies under your name—Clarence has already handled it for you."

Milo didn't take it. Didn't even glance at it.

"I only want her."

Lucas said nothing more. He clapped Milo on the shoulder.

After that dinner, life seemed to settle into a steady calm.

That evening, after Matthew had gone to bed, Lucas was still in his study on a cross-continental video conference.

Juliana's arm cast had been removed and replaced with a lighter brace. She poured herself a glass of water and sat on the couch, absently clicking the TV remote.

When Lucas's meeting ended, it was nearly midnight. He emerged still carrying that sharp edge that belonged to the boardroom. Seeing Juliana still there, the fatigue in his expression eased slightly.

"Why aren't you asleep?"

"Waiting for you." Juliana paused after saying it, surprised at herself.

Lucas looked at her. He set down his glass, leaned down, and pressed a kiss to her forehead. Light, carrying a hint of coolness and tobacco.

Just then, his phone rang.

David. A call this late was rarely good news.

Lucas walked out to the balcony to answer, his voice low. Juliana couldn't see his expression, only his straight-backed silhouette casting a silent shadow against the glass.

A few minutes later, he hung up and came back.

"Something wrong?" Juliana asked.

Lucas didn't answer immediately. Then he looked at Juliana, his expression more grave than she'd ever seen.

"Owen's case is closed. But he left behind an encrypted hard drive. David spent half a month cracking it."

"Most of it's his criminal records and ledgers. But there's one transaction that's strange. Three days before we moved in, a massive sum was transferred from an untraceable offshore trust account into his money pool."

Juliana's brow furrowed. "What does that mean?"

"It means someone was funding him. Owen was already at the end of his rope at that point, leaking from every angle. This money wasn't an investment. It was support. Or more accurately, payment for him to go die."

The air seemed to turn cold in an instant.

Lucas leaned against the couch and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I thought it was over."

He'd laid such an elaborate trap, even using himself and Juliana as pieces on the board, only to discover he'd merely overturned one corner of someone else's chessboard.

Juliana's heart sank. Suddenly, her personal phone vibrated. A video call request.

Matthew.

Juliana's chest tightened. She answered.

Matthew's delicate face appeared on screen, with a row of computer monitors in the background, code flickering across them.

"Mom." Matthew's voice was soft.

"Matty? What's wrong, did you have a nightmare?" Juliana gentled her voice.

"No. Mom, that USB drive you asked me to back up—the one Logan gave you—I looked at it again today."

"I found... the videos inside were altered."

Juliana's heartbeat skipped. "Matty, don't say things like that."

"I'm not making it up! Mom, look, this is the video's metadata stream. In several key frames, I found traces of secondary encoding and compression. Very subtle, but it's definitely there. Like a painting that someone covered with a new layer using more sophisticated paint."

Lucas had been listening quietly, but when he heard "the videos were altered," his head snapped up, his gaze sharp as a blade, landing on Juliana's phone screen.

Juliana's knuckles turned white gripping the phone. She didn't understand the complex terminology, but she understood what Matthew meant.

"Especially this part." Matthew zoomed in on the image—that blurry footage from the dock where Owen was conducting a deal with several subordinates. "This guy Owen, look at his shadow. Based on the angle of the overhead lights at the dock, his shadow should be longer, and the edges should be blurred from light diffraction. But in the video, his shadow's outline is too sharp, and the length... it's about five percent shorter. This is a common mistake in computer rendering when trying to make composite images look more 'real'—they ignore environmental light and diffuse reflection."

Juliana's mind was spinning.

Lucas had already stood up. He crossed to her side in a few strides, took the phone from her hand, and stared hard at the shadow Matthew had circled in red on the screen.

Lucas's breathing stopped.

"Send me the original files." Lucas's voice was terribly hoarse.

Matthew hung up the video call without a word. Soon, an encrypted file package arrived in Lucas's email.

In the study, two computers sat side by side, both lit.

One played the contents from Logan's USB drive that Matthew had sent. The other displayed raw surveillance footage Lucas had David pull from police records and his own security system—footage from various angles during the raid on Owen.

Comparison.

Frame-by-frame comparison.

At first, nothing seemed wrong. Owen's face, his movements—all seamless.

Someone had used AI face-swapping or even more sophisticated image synthesis technology to perfectly overlay "Owen's" face onto another person.

Owen was real. Many of his crimes were real.

But in certain critical moments, the "Owen" appearing in surveillance, directing all their attention toward him, was fake.

Juliana watched Lucas's profile. His jawline was taut as iron.

The enemy they'd struggled with every ounce of strength, even risking their lives to kill, might have been nothing more than an actor pushed to the front of the stage from the very beginning.

They'd only addressed the surface. The root cause remained. Worse, they weren't even certain whether the target they'd dealt with was the real one.

The air in the study felt vacuum-sealed.

Juliana felt her hands and feet go cold—not from temperature, but from a sense of helplessness seeping from her bones.

After who knows how long, Lucas's phone rang again.

He glanced at it and hung up directly.

But soon, the phone stubbornly rang again.

"Answer it." Juliana said softly. "It's probably David."

Lucas looked at her, then finally answered and put it on speaker.

"Lucas, did you see it? I just got the decryption report. Damn it..." David swore on the other end, clearly shaken by the discovery. "We've been played! From start to finish! There's someone else involved! Not some mastermind—Owen was just a pawn!"

Lucas said nothing.

"Just calm down." David's voice quickly steadied. "This can't be rushed. Whoever could set up a trap this big, use Owen as a disposable piece, make fools of us—they're not someone we can flush out in a day or two. Right now... don't spiral."

David paused, his tone softening, almost tentative.

"Is Juliana with you? Listen to me. You and her—you traded your lives to get back what you have now. In those woods, if one thing had gone differently, Kate wouldn't be the only one in the ICU right now. The case needs investigating, but life goes on. Don't throw away what you barely managed to salvage."

Lucas looked down at his phone screen, at the screenshot Matthew had sent marking the shadow error.

After a long silence, Lucas finally spoke, his voice terribly hoarse.

"I know."

He hung up and shut down the computer. The study plunged back into darkness.

"I'll get you some water." Juliana stood.

Lucas caught her wrist.

He didn't use force, just held it there. Juliana turned back. In the moonlight streaming through the window, she saw the churning emotions in his eyes.

A mixture of frustration, rage, and... fear.

"Don't go," he said.