Chapter 189 Aegis Mainframes Go Completely Dark
"Shut the servers down," I said.
Ricardo pulled his hands away from the keyboard. He looked across the glass table. "Mina, if I cut the physical connection to the Aegis mainframes, we go blind. The entire eastern sector grid vanishes from our monitors."
"If you leave the connection open," I replied, "the syndicate drains the rest of our client data. Shut them down."
"Do it," Tristan said. He stood in the corner of the secure war room. The harsh lights cast deep shadows over his face. "A blind fortress is better than an open gate. Cut the feed."
Ricardo exhaled a harsh breath. He hit a sequence of keys. The massive digital screens on the wall flickered, then died, turning into slabs of black glass.
The cyber-attack stopped. But the damage remained.
"They took the Vanguard logistics files," Ricardo said. He rubbed his temples. "They erased the shipping manifests. Everything Pembroke touched is gone. He burned his own trail."
"Pembroke does not write code," I said. "He wears expensive suits and shouts at middle managers. Someone handed him a key."
Tristan walked toward the table. He rested his hands on the edge. The muscles in his forearms pulled tight under his rolled-up sleeves. "Silas came through."
I snapped my head toward him. We agreed to share the dirt. "The information broker?"
"Yes," Tristan said. "Silas traced the dark money. The funds Pembroke used to buy the Vanguard fleet did not originate from a syndicate collective. The syndicate is just muscle. A shell. The money came from a single, static source."
Tristan pulled a flash drive from his pocket. He tossed it onto the glass table. The small piece of metal skittered across the surface and stopped near Ricardo’s hand.
"Silas pulled the ledger," Tristan explained. "The origin account is buried under layers of phantom corporations, but the core routing number is intact. Decrypt it, Ricardo. Let us see who bought our empire."
Ricardo picked up the drive. He plugged it into a standalone, offline terminal. His fingers moved over the keys, a blur of motion. Lines of green code cascaded down his secondary monitor.
I stood up. I walked around the table and stood behind Ricardo. Tristan joined me.
"The encryption is old," Ricardo muttered. "Ten, maybe twelve years old. Pre-merger standards. It is a dormant offshore account. Someone parked a massive amount of cash here a long time ago and never touched it. Until last week."
"Break the wall," Tristan ordered.
"I am breaking it," Ricardo said. He hit the enter key. "Decryption complete. Pulling the account holder data now."
The screen flashed white. A single line of text appeared in the center of the monitor.
It was a name.
My lungs locked. The air in the war room turned to lead. The floor tilted beneath my feet. I grabbed the back of Ricardo’s chair to keep from falling.
I stared at the screen. The glowing letters burned into my retinas.
Account Holder: Thomas Whitmore.
"No," I whispered. The word scraped against my throat. "No, that is impossible."
Ricardo stared at the monitor. His face lost all color. "Mina, the routing numbers confirm it. The dark money backing Oliver Pembroke, the funds used to buy the Vanguard fleet, the cash paying the syndicate... it all comes from Thomas Whitmore."
"He is in federal prison," Tristan said. His voice was a low, dangerous rumble. "He is in a maximum-security cell. His assets were seized. His accounts were frozen."
"Not this one," I said. The puzzle pieces snapped together, forming a picture made of pure horror. "He hid this account before the Johnston merger. He kept a war chest buried in the dark, untouched, untraceable."
I let go of the chair. I took a step back. The walls of the room felt too close.
Thomas Whitmore. The man who hunted my mother. The man who ordered armed guards to rip my son from my arms. The man I put in a cage.
My biological father.
The revelation in the rusty lockbox a few months ago shattered my world. Finding out I carried Whitmore blood disgusted me, but I accepted it. I chose to believe biology did not define me. I beat him. I won.
But monsters do not die just because you lock them away.
"He is doing this from a cage," I said. My voice trembled, a raw, fractured sound. I hated the weakness in it, but the pain tore through my armor. "He orchestrated the cyber-attack. He hired the syndicate. He sent the toy to Elias."
Tristan closed the distance between us. He grabbed my shoulders. His grip was firm, grounding me in the present.
"Look at me," Tristan commanded.
I lifted my head. His gray eyes were dark with a protective fury.
"Thomas is in a cell," Tristan stated. "He does not have a phone. He does not have an internet connection. He cannot execute a cyber-attack or coordinate a shadow synd
icate from a concrete box."
"Then how is he moving the money?" I asked.