Chapter 69 Laying To Rest
The heavy steel door of the Vane safe house closed with a thud that sounded like a tomb shutting, and Alex stood in the middle of the concrete living room with his hands on his hips while he watched the security monitors flicker to life. He had been pulled out of the dark hallway behind the private club by the Vane security team just seconds before the men from Blackwood could pull their triggers, and now he was stuck in a windowless bunker with Sarah and Mark..
Sarah sat on the edge of a modular sofa, her business suit looked wrinkled and she had already kicked off her heels, while Mark stood by the kitchen island with his arms crossed, looking at Alex like he was the one who had planned the entire disaster.
"The security lead said the perimeter is clear, but we are staying here until the sweep of the main building is done, and that means no outside lines and no internet for the next two days," Alex said, his voice sounding flat and tired as he looked at the two of them.
"So we are trapped in a basement because your sister can't keep her hackers under control, and I’m supposed to just sit here while my firm sits idle?" Sarah asked, she stood up and walked toward him, her eyes looking sharp and unimpressed by the high-tech walls surrounding them.
"It is for your safety, Sarah, the leak involved personal data and I wasn't going to take a chance on Helena sending someone to your house to look for more leverage," Alex replied, but he wouldn't look her in the eye, he just kept staring at the camera feeds.
"Don't lie to her, Alex, you brought us here because you wanted to hide from the fact that you are losing the city, and you wanted a cage where I couldn't walk away when things got ugly," Mark snapped.
"I am trying to save our lives, Mark, so if you could stop acting like a victim for five minutes, maybe we could figure out a way to get out of this mess," Alex growled, he turned to face his former best friend and the two of them stood chest to chest.
"Enough, both of you sit down right now because I am not spending forty-eight hours watching two grown men act like children in a sandbox," Sarah shouted, her voice bounced off the concrete walls and she pointed at the two chairs facing each other near the fireplace.
"Alex, you are going to stop playing the hero, and Mark, you are going to stop acting like you didn't spend seven years following Alex through every fire he started fire he started, and you are both going to talk until there is nothing left to say."
They sat down because Sarah looked like she was ready to start a fire of her own if they didn't, and the first hour was filled with nothing but silence and the sound of the ventilation system humming in the ceiling. Alex looked at the floor and Mark looked at the wall, and Sarah sat between them like a judge, refusing to let either of them leave the room until the masks were gone.
"I didn't choose to fall for your mother because I wanted to hurt you, Mark, I did it because she was the only thing in my life that didn't feel like a transaction or a Harrington strategy," Alex said finally, his voice was low and he sounded more like the boy Mark used to know than the executive he had become.
"You knew what it would do to me, you knew that my dad was already a mess and that I needed my best friend to be the one person who didn't lie to me, and you did it anyway," Mark replied, his voice wasn't loud but it was full of a jagged pain that made Sarah close her eyes for a second.
"I was selfish, and I was wrong to hide it from you, but I am not sorry for loving her, and I am not sorry for trying to protect her from the people who think she is just a pawn in a game," Alex said, he looked up and met Mark’s gaze and for the first time, he didn't try to dominate the conversation, he just told the truth.
"The protection is the problem, Alex, you treat us like property that needs to be guarded in a safe, and you don't even see that Sarah is smarter than you and she doesn't need a bunker to survive," Mark said, he looked at his mother and then back at Alex. "You are becoming just like Richard, you think money and steel walls are the only things that keep people loyal."
Alex went quiet at that, the comparison to his father hit him harder than a physical blow, and he looked around at the cold, high-tech room and realized that Mark was right, he had built a life of walls and secrets and he was losing the very people he was trying to keep. Sarah reached out and took Alex’s hand.
"If you want to be free of Richard and Helena, you have to stop fighting them on their terms, Alex, you have to let them think they have won the company so you can keep the parts of yourself that actually matter," Sarah said, her voice was calm and she looked at the two men she loved. "Let Helena take the chair, let her have the title, and let her deal with the board while you walk away with the Vane name and your dignity."
"She will destroy everything I’ve worked for these last months," Alex whispered.
"No, she will destroy the version of you that you hate, and once she thinks she has won the battle, she will get sloppy, and that is when we win the war," Sarah told him, and she saw the realization dawn in Alex’s eyes, the moment where he decided to stop being a Harrington heir and start being a man.
The tension broke after that, and the rest of the night was spent in a strange, domestic peace, they cooked a meal from the emergency rations and they talked about things that weren't corporate or legal, and Mark and Alex even shared a laugh over a memory from college. It felt like the air was finally clearing, and when the forty-eight hours were up, Alex walked to the main console to override the lockdown and check the final security reports.
"The sweep is done, we can head back to the city," Alex said, his voice sounded lighter as he typed in his master password to reconnect to the Harrington servers so he could check the morning stock reports.
The screen flashed red, and a message appeared in bold black letters that said "Access Denied: Invalid Credentials," and Alex frowned, he tried his backup code and then his biometric scan, but the system rejected every single one of them. He pulled up the internal news feed on the emergency line and his face went pale as he read the headlines that had been posted while they were underground.
"What is it, what’s wrong?" Sarah asked, she walked over to the console and looked at the screen.
"Helena didn't breach the servers to steal data, she used the lockdown to trigger an emergency clause in the bylaws that says if an executive is unreachable during a security crisis, their power is temporarily transferred to the next in line," Alex said, his voice was shaking with a new kind of fury.
"She used the last two days to legally lock me out of every Harrington account, and while we were sitting here talking, she convinced the board that I abandoned my post during a leak."
"She played us, Alex," Mark said, he looked at the screen. The safe house had been the trap all along.