Chapter 70

POV: Isabella

The Grand Central Terminal was a cavern of echoes and shadows, a monument to a time when travel was an act of grace rather than a desperate flight. Beneath the iconic celestial ceiling, the midnight crowd was thin—mostly weary commuters and the invisible people who called the marble corners home.

Marcus led me through the concourse, his pace quick but steady. He didn't look back, but I could feel the tension radiating off him. Every few steps, his hand would brush against the heavy weight of the laptop bag slung over his shoulder—the bag that held the true Julian Vane files.

"We’re almost there," Marcus whispered, steering me toward the rows of brass-plated safe-deposit lockers near the luggage claim. "Once we drop the drive, we head for the subway. We don't wait for Liam. That was the deal."

"The deal was to survive," I said, my eyes scanning the balcony above us. "Liam is out there being hunted so we can move freely. If we just dump the evidence and run, we’re leaving him with nothing but a target on his back."

"The evidence is the only thing keeping him alive, Isabella. As long as Eleanor thinks he has it, she’ll chase him. If she finds out it’s with us, she’ll stop chasing and start erasing."

He stopped in front of locker 449. He pulled a heavy brass key from his pocket—a physical key, a relic in an age of biometrics. He slid it into the lock, but as he turned it, he froze.

The lock didn't click. It hissed.

"Marcus?" I asked, stepping back.

"Get down!" Marcus shouted, lunging for me.

A sharp, high-pitched chirp echoed through the terminal, followed by the heavy thud of the locker door swinging open. It wasn't empty. Inside was a small, black device with a spinning red light—a signal repeater.

From the shadows of the arched doorways, four men in dark grey suits stepped into the light. They didn't have the tactical gear of the roof-team; these were the "cleaners," the men Eleanor used when she needed a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer.

"Ms. Vane," the lead man said, his voice calm and terrifyingly polite. "Mr. Sterling was quite clever with the roof diversion, but he forgot that the Vane Trust owns the lease on this terminal’s security infrastructure. We’ve been waiting for you to check the box."

Marcus moved to draw his weapon, but the click of four safeties being disengaged echoed through the hall.

"Don't be foolish, Marcus," the man said. "You’re a contractor. Your contract just expired. Give us the bag, and you can walk out the Vanderbilt exit. We only want the girl and the data."

I looked at Marcus. He was breathing hard, his eyes darting toward the exits. He was a professional, but he wasn't a martyr. I could see the calculation in his eyes—the realization that we were cornered in an open space with no cover and no backup.

"I have the encryption codes," I said, stepping in front of Marcus. I felt the phantom weight of the shunt in my chest, a memory of the heat that used to dominate my life. "The files on that drive are locked with a Vane-Sovereignty bypass. If you kill us here, the drive auto-wipes. Eleanor gets the hardware back, but she loses the proof of the debt. She’ll be bankrupt by morning."

The lead man paused. "She said you were clever. She also said you were prone to dramatic gestures."

"It’s not a gesture," I said, my voice steady, sounding more like my mother than I cared to admit. "It’s a protocol. My father wrote it. He knew that one day, his own wife would try to seize his mind. He built a 'Dead Man’s Hand' into the encryption. If the biometric signature of the primary heir—me—isn't detected on the terminal every sixty minutes, the drive becomes a brick."

It was a lie. A beautiful, desperate lie. But I knew the Vane encryption language better than anyone alive. I knew the names of the sub-routines. I knew how the myths were built.

"Check the drive," I challenged him. "Hook up your scanner. See for yourself."

The man nodded to one of his subordinates, who stepped forward with a handheld tablet. Marcus reluctantly handed over the bag. I watched as they plugged a cable into the drive, the screen of the tablet lighting up with a cascade of red text.

"It’s locked," the technician said, his brow furrowing. "Acheron-level encryption. I can't even see the file structure."

"Because it’s waiting for me," I said.

I stepped toward the technician, my heart hammering against my ribs. I needed to get close to the tablet. I needed to touch the interface.

"Isabella, don't," Marcus whispered.

"I’m tired of running, Marcus," I said.

I reached for the tablet, my fingers hovering over the screen. The technician didn't stop me; he was curious, his professional ego piqued by the chance to see a Vane-level bypass in action.

I didn't enter a code. I entered a sequence of commands I had memorized from the Julian Vane files in the safe house—not a password, but a system-wide override for the terminal’s own network.

Command: Security.Override.Vane_Admin

Target: Terminal_Lights_Emergency_Lockout

"What are you doing?" the lead man asked, his hand moving toward his holster.

"I'm turning off the lights," I said.

I swiped my finger across the screen.

The Grand Central Terminal plunged into absolute, terrifying darkness. The celestial ceiling went black. The floor lamps died. The only light was the faint, green glow of the exit signs.

"Go!" I screamed to Marcus.

I didn't run for the exit. I knew they’d expect that. I ran for the information booth in the center of the concourse—the one with the four-faced brass clock. I knew the booth had a service trapdoor that led to the "M42" secret basement, a place my father had shown me when I was a child.

I heard the guards shouting in the dark, the sounds of their heavy boots sliding on the marble.

"Find her! Use the infrared!"

I felt the cold brass of the clock’s base. I dropped to my knees, my fingers searching for the recessed latch in the floor. I found it, a small iron ring hidden beneath a loose piece of marble. I pulled with everything I had.

The trapdoor groaned open.

"Isabella!"

I looked up. A beam of light from a high-powered flashlight cut through the darkness, illuminating the space inches from my head. I didn't wait. I rolled into the hole, pulling the marble slab back into place just as a bullet whistled through the air, chipping the stone above me.

I tumbled down a narrow, metal ladder, landing in a damp, concrete tunnel that smelled of iron and ozone. This was the "undercity," the maze of steam pipes and electrical conduits that powered the heart of New York.

I was alone. I didn't have a weapon. I didn't have Marcus. But I had the laptop bag. The technician had been so distracted by the lights that I had snatched the drive back as the power died.

I pulled my phone from my pocket. It was dead. No signal. The depths of the terminal were a lead-shielded cage.

I started to walk, my hand grazing the warm pipes of the steam lines. I knew these tunnels led to the basement of the Chrysler Building, and from there, to the subway lines that fed directly into the foundations of Sterling Tower.

Liam was going to the top. He was going to confront the queen in her castle. And he thought he was doing it alone.

"Not this time, Liam," I whispered.

I moved through the dark, my footsteps echoing in the narrow passage. Every few minutes, I’d hear a hum of a drone in the ventilation shafts above—Eleanor’s eyes, searching for the "asset."

But I wasn't an asset anymore. I was a ghost in the machine.

I reached a junction in the tunnel where a heavy, iron door stood marked with a faded Sterling-Vane logo. I pushed it open, stepping into a small, windowless room filled with ancient server racks. This was a relay station—a piece of the network so old it hadn't been updated to the cloud.

I sat on the floor and opened the laptop. I didn't need a signal. I needed a hardline.

I found the port, plugged the drive in, and watched as the screen flickered to life. The Julian Vane files weren't just ledgers. They were a map. And at the very center of the map was a file titled: Final Contingency – The Sterling Bridge.

I opened it.

It wasn't a bypass code. It was a video file.

The screen showed a man—my father—sitting in a chair, his face pale but his eyes bright with a sharp, desperate intelligence. He looked directly into the camera, and for a moment, I felt like he was looking at me.

"Isabella," he said, his voice a rasp. "If you are watching this, it means the machine has failed. It means Eleanor has chosen the legacy over the daughter. And it means Liam is likely standing between you and the end of the world."

I felt a sob rise in my throat.

"I didn't build the Medusa core to save you, Isabella," Julian said. "I built it to archive the one thing Eleanor can't control: the truth about the 2014 merger. The Sterling family didn't buy us out. We bought them. With money stolen from the Sterling pension fund."

The revelation hit me like a physical blow. The "Great Sterling Merger" was a lie. The entire foundation of Liam’s empire was built on the theft of his own family’s future. And my father had helped her do it.

"Liam doesn't know," Julian continued. "He thinks he’s a king. He doesn't know he’s a janitor cleaning up a crime scene. Give him the bridge, Isabella. Give him the choice."

The video ended, and the screen transitioned to a single, glowing line of code.

Password: The name of the girl on the bridge.

I stared at the screen. The cliffhanger wasn't the secret; it was the sound of the iron door behind me creaking open.

I didn't look back. I knew who it was. The scent of sandalwood and the cold, metallic hum of a handheld scanner preceded her.

"Hello, Isabella," Eleanor said, her voice echoing in the small server room. "I see you found the family archives. I hope you found them... enlightening."

I closed the laptop and stood up, the drive clutched in my hand. "The police are coming, Eleanor. Liam is at the tower. He’s telling the board."

"Liam is at the tower because I allowed him to be," Eleanor said, stepping into the light. She was holding a small, silver remote—the manual override for the terminal’s lockdown. "And the board isn't listening to a bankrupt ghost. They’re listening to me. Now, give me the drive, and we can go home."

"I am home," I said, looking around the dark, dusty room. "I’m in the truth. And you aren't invited."

Eleanor’s face contorted, the mask of the mother finally shattering to reveal the monster beneath. "Give it to me, or I trigger the terminal’s fire suppression system. The gas will kill you in seconds, Isabella. Is a dead man’s video worth your life?"

I looked at the password prompt on the screen. The name of the girl on the bridge.

I didn't type my own name. I typed the name Liam had called me the night we met. The one name that wasn't a Vane or a Sterling.

I pressed Enter.