Chapter 3 - Operation Counter-Strike
Ariana rolled her chair back, her eyes narrowing as she watched the expression on my face. "Locked you out?"
"Every cent," I muttered, tossing the phone onto the desk. "He must have used his congressional leverage or corporate ties to flag my social security number under a fraudulent emergency probate freeze. He thinks starving me out will force me to crawl back and beg for mercy."
Ariana let out a dark, humorless laugh, her fingers dancing across her mechanical keyboard with blinding speed. "Your old man is a dinosaur. He thinks money in traditional banks is real power. He has no idea how easy it is to crack a foundation built on paper trails."
She spun one of her monitors toward me. Lines of green code and banking metadata cascaded down the screen.
"While you were sleeping off the concussion, I ran a preliminary trace on Rhys's campaign finance architecture," Ariana said, pointing a slender finger at a complex node map. "Your father's campaign is heavily funded by a shadow PAC called Patriot First. But the real money—millions in undeclared kickbacks from defense contractors—isn't in his name. It's routed through a shell company registered in the Caymans under a dummy corporation called Hale Maritime LLC."
I leaned closer, the pain in my jaw fading into the background as tactical focus took over. "Can we breach it?"
"Breach it?" Ariana grinned, her eyes gleaming with chaotic brilliance. "Maddox, I can turn his entire financial empire inside out before lunch. But we need a physical vector. We need someone inside his congressional office to plug a hardware key directly into his private terminal."
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"I know the exact person," I said, my mind racing. "Marcus Vance. He was my father's junior chief of staff before he got sick of Rhys's ethics and quit last month. He’s currently working out of a small lobbying firm downtown, completely bitter and looking for payback."
"Set up the meet," Ariana said, cracking her knuckles. "We're going to wage a high-tech siege, and your father is going to lose his kingdom."
