CHAPTER 46

​POV: Liam

​The air in the bunker’s elevator was cold and smelled of stale grease and industrial coolant. It was a confined, mechanical space that felt like it was shrinking as the floor indicator climbed toward the subterranean levels. My hand was still shaking from the effort of bypassing the biometric lock at the surface. I had used a legacy code my father had given me years ago—a string of digits and a neural hash that was supposed to be for "emergency containment only."

​It was an emergency. And Isabella was the containment.

​The doors slid open with a pressurized hiss. I stepped out into the blue-lit command center, a space that felt more like the bridge of a ghost ship than a research facility. Marcus Thorne was there, his hand reaching for a security phone with a lethal sort of speed. Isabella was standing by the main console, her face a mask of frozen shock. The flickering light from the monitors played across her features, making her look like a statue carved from ice.

​"Get out," she said. Her voice was a whip, cracking through the silence of the room.

​"No," I said. I didn't move. I planted my feet on the metal floor, refusing to let the weight of the situation push me back into the elevator. I looked at Thorne, my eyes hard. "Leave us."

​"I'm not leaving her with you, Sterling," Thorne snapped. He didn't move his hand from the phone. "You have no authority here. You’re a trespasser."

​"It's okay, Marcus," Isabella said, her eyes never leaving mine. There was a dangerous, steady calm in her tone that was far worse than a shout. "I can handle a ghost. He doesn't have any teeth left."

​Thorne hesitated, his gaze shifting between us. He saw something in her face that made him relent—a cold determination that didn't require protection. He lowered his hand, took a slow breath, and walked out. The heavy steel door clanged shut behind him, the sound echoing through the room like a hammer on an anvil.

​The silence that followed was louder than the breaching charges that had shaken the exterior gates an hour ago.

​"You broke into a private facility," Isabella said, her voice dropping to a low, steady register. "That’s a felony, Liam. I could have the federal agents outside arrest you before you even reach the elevator bank. I could end this right now."

​"Then do it," I said. I took a deliberate step toward her. She didn't flinch. She didn't even blink. "But before you call them, before you hand me over to the people waiting in the rain, look at this."

​I held out my tablet. It was the result of the agonizing all-nighter I’d spent digging through the Sterling Trust’s 'Ouroboros' files. I had spent hours breaking through layers of encryption I wasn't supposed to know existed, hunting for the truth in a forest of redacted names and shell companies. I had finally found the hidden ledger—the one that even Eleanor Vane didn't know existed in the Sterling archives.

​"I've already seen the trust records, Liam," she said, her lip curling in a slight, bitter line. "I know your family funded the project. I know I’m a Sterling-owned experiment. I’ve read the charter. I know I’m a line item in your father’s legacy."

​"You saw the funding, Isabella. You didn't see the destination." I tapped the screen, bringing up a map of overseas accounts and a series of complex transaction logs. "Eleanor moved four hundred million dollars out of the Aethelgard fund six months ago. She didn't use it for research or to stabilize the Medusa interface. She used it to buy up Sterling Tech debt through a series of legal gray zones and offshore holding companies."

​Isabella’s eyes narrowed, the curiosity finally overriding the rage. She reached out and took the tablet, her fingers scrolling through the data with practiced speed. She lived in the data; she saw the patterns before I even pointed them out.

​"She’s been shorting her own daughter’s company?" Isabella whispered, the realization hitting her.

​"She’s been positioning herself to buy the Sterling board from the bottom up," I said. "The 'denouncement' they just issued? The motion to remove me as Chairman? It wasn't Miller’s idea. Miller is just the mouth. Eleanor is the one who flipped the CFO. She’s the one who’s orchestrating the 'unstable' narrative in the press. She wants us both out—me out of the CEO's office and you out of the public's favor—so she can merge Vane Global and Sterling Tech under her private control. She isn't trying to save the company. She's trying to own the Medusa patent without any interference from either of us."

​Isabella looked at the data, then back at me. Her face was still guarded, the ice beginning to crack but not yet melting. "And you're telling me this because... why? To save your job? To get me to call off the dogs so you can keep your corner office?"

​"I don't have a job," I said. I felt a strange, terrifying sense of relief saying the words out loud. "The board has fifty-one percent of the proxy votes. I'm fired on Thursday morning, five minutes after the meeting begins. This isn't about the company anymore, Isabella. It's about the fact that if you testify on Thursday in D.C., you’re doing exactly what she wants. You’re giving her the chaos she needs to finalize the takeover. You’re destroying the only person who can stop her from taking the Medusa core."

​"The 'only person'?" She laughed, a short, bitter sound that felt like a slap. "You've done nothing but stay neutral, Liam. You’ve watched them tear me apart in the media, you watched them vote to call me insane, and you 'abstained.' You stood in the middle while the world burned me."

​"I abstained because if I voted 'No,' they would have removed me weeks ago, and I wouldn't have had the executive access to find this," I said, gesturing to the tablet in her hand. My voice was raw now, the exhaustion finally catching up to me. "I was trying to stay in the room so I could protect the data. I was trying to save the woman, Isabella, even if I had to sacrifice the wife to do it. I needed the keys to the vault to prove what she was doing."

​"You sacrificed both," she said, her voice small and sharp.

​She handed the tablet back to me, her touch brief and cold. "It doesn't change anything. I'm still testifying. I'm still going to D.C., and I'm still telling the truth about the Sterling Trust. If the truth hurts Eleanor too, then that’s just a bonus. I’m not playing your corporate games anymore."

​"If you expose the Trust in a federal hearing, the government seizes everything, Isabella. Every asset, every patent, every piece of hardware. Including you. They’ll treat you like a weapon of mass destruction or a piece of evidence. You’ll be in a government lab for the rest of your life while they try to figure out how to replicate what Eleanor did."

​"I’m already in a lab," she said, looking around the sterile, blue-lit bunker with a hollow expression. "At least in D.C., I’ll be the one talking. I’ll be the one holding the microphone while the empire falls."

​"Isabella, listen to me—"

​"No, you listen," she said, stepping into my space. The air between us was electric, thick with the history of the last year. I could smell the salt on her skin, the faint scent of the river and the rain. "You had your chance to be a man. You had your chance to stand by me when it mattered, before the lawyers got involved. You chose to be a CEO. You chose the boardroom. Now, you’re neither. Get out of my bunker, Liam. Go back to your empty tower."

​The cliffhanger wasn't the rejection. It wasn't even the coldness in her eyes. It was the fact that as I turned to leave, the primary monitor behind her began to flash with a bright, aggressive amber light. A long, continuous tone filled the room.

​PURGE COMPLETE: 100%. MEDUSA ARCHITECTURE DELETED.

​Isabella froze. The rage vanished, replaced by a haunting, wide-eyed stare. She turned toward the screen, her hand hovering over the console.

​"It's gone," she whispered. "The server... I wiped the server."

​"Not all of it," I said, my heart hammering against my ribs as I looked at the interface port on her collarbone, the small, silver light blinking. "You're the only copy left, Isabella. The data is only in your marrow now. And the board just authorized the 'forced recovery' for 10:00 AM on Thursday. They aren't going to wait for your testimony."

​The elevator dinged at the end of the hall. The sound of heavy boots echoed through the corridor. The feds were in the lobby, and they were moving fast.

​"You have thirty seconds to decide, Isabella," I said, the elevator doors beginning to rattle as they were engaged from the outside. "Do we go to D.C. together and fight this on our terms, or do I stay here and watch them carry you out of here in a crate?"

​She looked at the door, then back at the screen where her work had just vanished into digital dust. She looked at me, and for the first time in weeks, I didn't see the heiress or the asset. I saw the girl who had survived the bridge.

​"The car is in the rear tunnel," she said, her voice barely audible.

​"Then let's go," I replied.