Chapter 32: The digital trap (Sienna Vance)

The emergency red strobe light spun across the dark mahogany shelves of the library, casting long, bleeding shadows over the floorboards. Out in the driveway, the muffled roar of diesel engines signaled the arrival of the Vance tactical convoy, but in my chest, the real violence was happening in complete silence.

They were going to erase him.

Bronisław was taking twenty-four years of Jaxson Cole’s sweat, fractured bones, and relentless obsession, and sweeping it into a corporate dustbin on live television. And he was doing it using my hand to hold the broom.

"Sienna," Jaxson’s voice came out low, a grounded rumble near my ear. His fingers remained braced on my shoulders, his grip so firm it kept my knees from buckling under the sheer weight of the lie. "Look at the screen. What’s the protocol?"

"He’s lying to the league board," I said. The trembling in my vocal cords vanished, replaced by an icy, dangerous calm that surprised even me. My blood didn't run hot; it turned to slush. "He’s claiming the Vance medical board reviewed preliminary cellular imaging. But those files don't exist on the central server. They exist here. On my encrypted drive."

I turned on my heel, stepping out from beneath Jaxson’s touch, and rushed toward the heavy desk where my custom workstation sat. The laptop screen was glowing blue against the red pulses of the emergency lights, running on its internal battery.

My fingers flew across the mechanical keyboard. Click-click-click. The sound was sharp, rhythmically cutting through the low hum of the estate’s backup generators.

"What are you doing?" Jaxson asked, stepping up to the edge of the desk. He leaned over the polished wood, his broad shoulders blocking out the harsh strobe light, his dark blue eyes tracking every movement of my hands.

"I’m sending the raw DICOM files, the real-time ultrasound videos, and my certified joint stability metrics directly to Commissioner Arthur Vance," I replied without looking up. "My uncle thinks he owns the narrative because he spoke first. But if I bypass the corporate server and hit the league’s independent medical registry directly, the commissioner has a legal obligation to freeze the emergency retirement filing."

I opened my primary mail client, attached the seventy-gigabyte encrypted package containing Jaxson’s genuine medical history, and typed the commissioner’s private, unlisted registry address.

My thumb hovered over the enter key.

Do this, Sienna, and you are officially at war with your bloodline. You will never walk into a Vance facility again. You will be blacklisted from every hospital in Europe.

I didn't pause. I slammed my thumb down.

A white progress bar appeared on the screen. Uploading... 1%... 3%...

"Come on," I muttered, my breath fogging slightly in the cooling room. "Go through."

At five percent, the screen flashed yellow. A sharp, obnoxious tone chimed from the built-in speakers.

OUTGOING ENCRYPTION PROTOCOL REJECTED: DOMAIN GATEWAY UNREACHABLE.

My stomach dropped. I immediately opened a secondary terminal window, typing a manual routing command to push the data through a public relay node in Warsaw.

Connecting...

ERROR 403: LOCAL ADAPTER RESTRICTED BY HOST FIREWALL.

"No, no, no," I hissed, hitting the keys harder. My fingers were cold, stiffening up, but I kept typing, trying three different server backdoors I’d used during my clinical research years. "Connect, damn you, Connect"

TRANSMISSION BLOCKED BY ADMINISTRATOR OVERRIDE.

"Sienna," Jaxson said softly.

"I can bypass it," I snapped, my eyes burning as I stared at the lines of red error text flooding my terminal. "It’s just a domain socket block. He locked the Vance sub-nets when he started the press conference. I just need to tunnel through a peer-to-peer dark relay"

A large, warm hand came down over both of my wrists, stopping my frantic typing.

I froze. I looked up.

Jaxson was leaning closer, his chest nearly touching the edge of the desk. The anger that had blazed in his eyes during Bronisław’s speech was gone, replaced by something deep, steady, and terrifyingly intense. He wasn't looking at the screen. He was looking at me at the cold sweat glistening on my face, at the absolute defiance written across my face.

"You're fighting your own family," he said quietly, "To save my knee."

"I'm fighting for the truth," I corrected him, my chest heaving as I tried to pull my hands out from under his grip. "He’s using my name, Jaxson, he’s calling me his lead specialist while he murders your career, I am not a pawn in his game. I am a doctor, I took an oath, and I will not let that arrogant, corrupt old man destroy you to fill his own pockets"

Jaxson didn't let go of my wrists. Instead, his thumb rubbed a slow, deliberate circle over the pulse point in my right arm. His touch was hot, searing hot against my freezing skin.

"You don't owe me your career, Sienna," he murmured, his voice dropping into that raw, intimate register that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. "If you do this, there’s no going back to Kraków. There’s no inheritance. There’s no family safety net."

"Good," I spat, the word laced with pure venom aimed at the memory of my uncle. "I’d rather starve on the streets than spend another second shielding Bronisław Vance."

A slow, dangerous smile crept onto the corner of Jaxson’s lips. It wasn't his usual arrogant press-conference grin. It was real, sharp, and laden with a profound, terrifying respect.

"God, you're something else," he whispered.

Before I could answer, the doors of the library slammed open with a sound like a gunshot.

Radek Dąbrowski stepped into the room.

He didn't say a word to Jaxson. He walked straight past him, stepped up to my side of the desk, and reached down toward my workstation.

"Hey" I shouted, instinctively slamming my hands down over the keyboard. "What are you doing? I’m trying to clear the firewall!"

"Move your hands, Miss Vance," Radek said. His voice was completely flat, drained of any emotion.

"Radek," Jaxson warned, taking a step forward, his frame instantly shifting into a protective posture beside me. "Explain."

Radek didn't answer with words. He pulled a thick, rubberized security tool from his belt, reached past my arms, and yanked the power cable from the side of my laptop. Before I could scream at him, he grabbed the display lid and slammed it shut with a loud, metallic clack.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" I demanded, my anger flaring hot. "My encrypted drive was mid-cycle! If you corrupt those files"

Radek flipped the heavy laptop upside down on the desk. From his tactical vest, he pulled out a small, magnetic precision screwdriver and a flat steel prying tool. Without asking for permission, he jammed the screwdriver into the chassis, rapidly backing out the tiny silver screws holding the bottom aluminum plate together.

"Radek," Jaxson’s voice dropped into a dangerous threat. "You better have a damn good reason for touching her equipment."

"I do, boss," Radek replied.

With a sickening, sharp CRACK, Radek forced the prying tool under the aluminum seam, bending the custom casing backward and tearing the internal clips completely off.

"Hey" I yelled, reaching out to stop him.

Radek clicked on a high-intensity penlight, shining a needle-thin beam of bright white light directly into the exposed green motherboard of my computer.

"Look right there, Miss Vance," Radek said, pointing the tip of his steel prying tool at a tiny, black square soldered directly onto the traces between the primary Wi-Fi card and the system memory.

The chip had a stamp with a microscopic silver crest. The Vance family crest.

I felt all the air leave my lungs.

"What is that?" I whispered, my hand wavering as I reached toward the exposed board.

"It’s a hardware-level packet sniffer and GPS transponder," Radek said, looking up at me with eyes that held no mercy. "It doesn't use the network firewall, Miss Vance. It bypasses your operating system entirely. It’s hardwired into your processor's power rail."

He looked from me to Jaxson, his voice delivering the final, suffocating words.