Chapter 150 Cornered By The Real Traitor
The video showed a secure room. Elias was sitting on a rug, playing with a small wooden horse. Marcus was standing by the door, but he wasn't looking at the boy. He was looking at a man standing in the corner—a man holding a suppressed rifle.
"Marcus is a good soldier," Benedict said. "But he knows when he’s outmatched. He surrendered the moment my team arrived at the safe house."
"If you touch him," Tristan started, his voice cracking with a terrifying desperation.
"I won't touch him," Benedict promised. "As long as Minerva signs the board proxy. I need your votes to oust Harriet and declare the Whitmore debt fraudulent. We’re going to merge Johnston and Aegis. You’ll be the face of the company, and I will be the hand that moves it."
I looked at the screen. My son looked so small. He looked so innocent. He didn't know that his life was being traded for a chairmanship. He didn't know that the "serious man" he had seen through the glass was the only person truly fighting for him.
"Minerva, don't," Tristan whispered. "He’ll kill us all anyway once he has the signature."
"Tristan is projecting his own failures onto me," Benedict said. He pulled a leather-bound folder from his briefcase and set it on the bedside table. He held out a pen. "The board meeting is at nine. Sign this, and the man in the room with your son will walk away. Don't sign it, and the Serrano line ends tonight."
I looked at the pen. I looked at the man who had been my mentor. Every choice I had made in the last three years had led to this moment. I thought I was taking my revenge. I thought I was winning. But I was just a puppet in a game that Benedict Holloway had started before I was born.
"I need to talk to him," I said. My voice was a whisper. "I need to hear his voice."
"Sign first," Benedict said.
I picked up the pen. The weight of it felt like lead. I looked at Tristan. He was watching me, his eyes filled with a raw, immersive pain. He knew what I was doing. He knew that by signing this, I was surrendering the legacy my mother had died to protect.
I touched the pen to the paper. The ink flowed, a dark, permanent stain.
But as I began the first letter of my name, the lights in the hospital flickered. A deep, heavy rumble vibrated through the floor.
The monitor showing Elias’s room suddenly went to static.
Benedict frowned, tapping the screen of his phone. "What is this?"
A secondary chime sounded from the tablet in my lap. It wasn't a security alert. It was a message from an encrypted source.
The link is active. The world is watching.
I looked at Benedict. I didn't finish the signature. Instead, I grabbed the tablet and hit the broadcast button.
"You forgot one thing, Benedict," I said. My voice was no longer weak. It was a blade. "I didn't just build a cosmetics company. I built a digital network. And I didn't come to this hospital alone."
The television on the wall snapped on. It wasn't showing the news. It was showing a live feed of the room we were in. Every word Benedict had said—the confession about my mother, the threat to my son, the plan to loot the conglomerate—it was being broadcasted to every major news outlet in the capital.
Benedict’s face went white. He lunged for the tablet, but I threw it across the room. It shattered against the wall, but the red light on the hidden camera in the smoke detector remained steady.
"The marshals are five minutes away," I said. "And the man in the room with my son? He isn't yours."
The static on Benedict's phone cleared. It showed the man with the rifle being tackled to the ground. It wasn't Marcus who did it.
It was Javier Mendoza.
"You thought you were the only one playing the long game," I said. I stood over him, my shadow falling across the contract he had tried to force me to sign. "But Alexander Johnston left a secondary trust. One that required a biological verify from a Serrano to activate. And I activated it the moment I walked into this building."
Benedict backed away, his hands shaking. He looked at the camera, then at the door. He knew his life was over. The mastermind had been unmasked in front of the world.
But as he reached the door, he stopped. He looked at me with a look of pure, unadulterated venom.
"You think you've won, Minerva?" Benedict laughed, a dry, hollow sound. "You think the Johnstons will let a girl like you sit in that chair? Look at the stock price. Look at the news."
I looked at the television. The ticker at the bottom of the screen began to scroll with a speed that made my head spin.
FEDERAL RAID ON JOHNSTON HEADQUARTERS... HARRIET MONTGOMERY IN CUSTODY... MASSIVE SELL-OFF TRIGGERED.
And then, the final line appeared.
ANONYMOUS SOURCE LEAKS TRUTH: MINERVA SERRANO ACCUSED OF COLLUSION IN THE DEATH OF NATALIA SERRANO.
My blood turned to stone.
"I didn't just have a plan for the company, Minerva," Benedict whispered as the sound of boots echoed in the hallway. "I had a plan for the scandal. If I go down, I'm taking the Serrano name with me."
He stepped out into the hall and disappeared into the swarm of arriving officers.
I stood in the center of the room, the silence returning like a suffocating shroud. I looked at Tristan. He was staring at the television, his face a mask of horror.