Chapter 256 The Foiled Plan
Chapter 256 The Foiled Plan
Chapter Two Hundred And Fifty-Three
Nathan stood beside Monica, his chest tight with fear and panic.
He swallowed hard, his Adam apple bibbing up and down in terror.
No!
Monica’s hand in his had gone very still.
He thought about the visits.
He thought about the things he had said.
He had said them in the specific freedom of a man speaking to what he believed was an unresponsive body, the freedom of a person with no audience, and he had said things in that freedom that he would not have said in any room with any other living person in it.
He thought back on them now with growing apprehension.
He thought about Lucian lying in that bed hearing every word of it.
He thought about three years of that.
God, he was fucked!
Fucked sideways and back!
The specific horror of what that meant arrived in stages, each stage worse than the preceding one.
Nathan stood in the boardroom with twelve board members.
He looked at everyone, the chairman and Zach, the two men at the door and the woman beside Lucian who was watching him with the steady, unmediated patience of someone who had been watching this moment approach for a long time.
He inhaled shakily.
“You can’t—” he started.
“Give it up, Nathan.”
It was Aria.
She said it simply and without heat, with that scathing tone of someone stating the most practical available option rather than making an emotional appeal.
“We have more,” she said, giving him a cold smile. “What Zach has presented today is not everything. It is the amount required for today. There is more.” She looked at him with the level, composed gaze she always had. “There is the Vaughn connection. There is the full chain from the accident to the treatment suppression to every conversation Lucian heard from that bed. There is the contact you made last month that we have been tracking since you made it.” She paused. “There is nowhere left to run to, Nathan.”
He looked at her, his mouth opening and closing with fear. He did not know what to say.
He thought about the contact.
The woman in the coffee shop in the western district.
The figure he had paid.
He thought about “tracking since you made it.”
He thought about Lucian’s men and Zach’s efficiency and the two men at the door who had been in position since before the meeting began.
He thought about the car on the route.
He thought about whether—
He thought about whether it was already too late for the car.
Nathan thought he was going to shit himself at that moment
“We’ve also addressed the vehicle,” Aria said, as though she had Nathan’s mind which she had not. She had simply known what he would be thinking and had arrived there first in the way she always arrived everywhere first. She smirked, “It won’t be an issue. You’ve failed, Nathan.”
Nathan looked at her, his chest heaving with restrained anger.
“Rarrrghhh!!!” He yelled in a guttural voice, slamming both fists against the table in front of him, “How fucking dare you?!”
How dare she tell him he’s failed?!
“Shut up, you scoundrel!” The chairman thundered, his face red with anger, “Iregret the day I brought you into my home. You’ve brought me nothing but shame!”
Nathan was still breathing hard from his fury. He ignored the Chairman and instead, glared round at Lucian and at the board members, who were watching him with the specific collective expression of twelve institutional people who have received enough information to form a conclusion and are waiting for the procedural next step.
He looked at the two men at the door.
Monica’s face was tight with fear and shame, and she slowly turned away from Nathan, unable to bear the embarrassment any longer
Nathan stood in the wreckage of the structure he had built, breathing hard as a shadow of doom enveloped him.
He finally understood completely, the full extent of what he had underestimated, although by now, it was too late.
At that moment, Zach stepped forward, speaking calmly.
He spoke in the measured, factual way he had maintained throughout the presentation, the way of a man who understood that the most devastating information was the information delivered without drama.
“The board should be aware,” he said, “of the events planned for this afternoon.”
He reached into the case.
He produced a photograph. Then several more. He placed them on the table in sequence with the same careful deliberateness.
“These were taken this morning,” he said. “The vehicle shown is registered to a logistics operator in the southern district. The modifications visible to the undercarriage were identified by our team at six forty-seven this morning.”
He placed one more photograph.
“This vehicle,” he said, “was parked on the route between Graves Tower and the residential district at the location shown. It was placed there this morning between five and six AM. Our team identified it through the monitoring protocol that has been in place on that route for the past three weeks.”
He looked at the board.
“The plan, as we have reconstructed it from the contact records obtained through the monitoring of the communication channel used by Mr Nathan, was to trigger a brake failure in the Graves company vehicle carrying Mr Lucian and Mrs Aria on their return journey this evening, with a secondary vehicle positioned to ensure the outcome was, in the words used in the communication, more certain than the previous attempt.”
He placed the final document.
“Both the vehicle and the operator have been secured,” he said. “The route is clear. No one was harmed.” He paused. “This morning.”
The last two words landed on the room with the specific weight of words that implied what would have happened if the morning had gone differently.
The board erupted.
Not all at once and not without shape. It was the eruption of institutional people, which meant it expressed itself through voices talking over each other and chairs being pushed back and the particular agitated energy of a group of people who had been sitting with significant information for an hour and had now received the piece of it that broke through the professional containment entirely.