Chapter 30 - The Lazarus Protocol
"Richard...?" The name felt foreign, heavy, and toxic on my tongue. I stared up at the balcony, watching the man I had mourned for ten long years lean casually against the stone railing as if he were welcoming guests to a holiday dinner rather than presiding over our execution. "Your plane... the wreckage off the coast of Nova Scotia... we held a memorial service. We buried an empty bronze casket with your name on it."
Richard let out a sharp, cynical laugh that echoed off the vaulted gothic ceilings. "Ah, the famous Vance family theatrics. Mother, you really should write a book about how easily you buy your own propaganda. The plane crash was funded by the board using corporate slush funds. I needed to disappear so I could quietly dismantle the family trust from the outside without you or the federal regulators breathing down my neck."
"You faked your own death just to steal from your mother?" Sarah snarled, stepping protectively in front of my wheelchair, her pistol locked firmly onto Richard’s chest, even though the angle made it a nearly impossible shot. "You're not a businessman, Richard. You're a coward and a criminal."
"Watch your tone, federal agent," Richard sneered, tapping the small red button on the detonator remote in his hand with a slow, deliberate rhythm. "Right now, every single structural pillar of this chapel is wired with enough C4 to send this entire holy sanctuary—and everyone inside it—straight down into the ravine below. By sunset, the official story will be that a tragic gas leak destroyed the historic Vance estate, and the surviving family members unfortunately perished in the blast."
"And Helen?" I demanded, my voice cutting through the freezing air of the chapel with an unyielding steel that made even Richard’s smile falter for a fraction of a second. "Did you plan on blowing her up too? Your own sister, whom you've kept locked up in this damp cellar of a chapel like a prisoner of war for twenty-five years?"
Victoria stepped forward from the shadows beside Richard, leaning heavily on her silver cane as she looked down at us with absolute disdain. "Helen isn't a prisoner, mother. She’s the vault. Every single encryption key, every offshore Swiss routing number, and every hidden asset of the Vance empire was hardcoded into her biological neural network using an experimental memory-retention chip that father invested in back in the nineties."
Helen, lying frail and pale on the marble altar, weakly turned her head toward me, a single tear cutting a clean path down her weathered cheek. "Don't... don't listen to them, mother," she whispered, her chest heaving as the biometric monitor beside her began to beep faster. "They... they tried to upload the final transfer sequence an hour ago... but the system requires two primary founder signatures to complete the asset wipe. That's why... that's why they needed you to die in the lake. And that's why they couldn't kill me yet."
"Because without both of us, the system locks permanently," I finished, a cold, dangerous realization dawning on me. I looked up at Victoria and Richard, my lips curving into a slow, terrifying smile. "You didn't bring us here to kill us yet, did you? You brought us here because you still need our thumbprints to authorize the final transfer."
May you like
Richard’s face darkened instantly, the casual arrogance vanishing, replaced by the desperate panic of a cornered predator. "You're going to authorize the transfer, mother. Right now. Or I swear to God I will turn this chapel into a smoking crater before you can even draw another breath."
***
