Chapter 73

POV: Liam

​The precinct wasn't a room; it was a holding pattern.

​The walls were painted a shade of beige that felt like a personal insult to anyone with a soul, and the air smelled of burnt coffee and the ozone of old printers. I sat at a metal table that had seen a thousand desperate men, my hands resting on the scratched surface. The bandages the EMT had wrapped around my palms were already starting to fray, the white gauze stained with the rust-colored marks of the night’s work.

​Across from me, a man in a navy suit—Special Agent Miller of the FBI—flipped through a stack of documents that had been printed from the Julian Vane files. He didn't look like a man who had just cracked the biggest corporate fraud case of the decade. He looked like a man who had a mortgage and a headache.

​"The pension move is documented, Liam," Miller said, not looking up. "The digital signatures are all there. Your father’s. Halloway’s. And, most importantly, the secondary authorization from Eleanor Vane’s private server. It’s a clean sweep for the DOJ. We’ll be freezing every Vane asset by noon."

​"Good," I said. My voice was a dry rasp. "Then we're done."

​"Not quite," Miller said, finally looking at me. He leaned back, the metal chair creaking under his weight. "There’s the matter of the 'kidnapping.' The warrants were issued based on a report filed by Eleanor. She claimed you took Isabella by force."

​"She was in a hotel room being hunted by a camera crew and a medical team," I said, my voice hardening. "I didn't kidnap her. I evacuated her."

​"The law is a blunt instrument, Liam. Until she gives a formal statement—and until the medical board clears her as 'competent' to have been a willing participant—those warrants stay open. You’re not a hero to the state yet. You’re a high-value suspect in a multi-jurisdictional mess."

​"She’s in the next room," I said, nodding toward the door. "Ask her."

​"We are," Miller said. "But we’re also asking about the money. Three billion dollars doesn't just evaporate into a merger. A significant portion of the Sterling pension fund was moved into a sub-ledger that we can't find. It wasn't used for the company. It wasn't used for the lab. It was... gone."

​I felt a cold prickle of unease at the base of my neck. "You think I have it?"

​"I think someone has it," Miller said. "And as the man who just liquidated the majority shares and triggered a margin call, you’re the most likely candidate for a 'retirement' fund."

​"I have eighteen dollars and a library card, Agent Miller. My wife already made the joke. It wasn't funny then, and it isn't funny now."

​The door opened, and a younger agent whispered something in Miller’s ear. Miller nodded, his expression shifting from suspicion to a professional, guarded neutrality.

​"You can go," Miller said.

​"Just like that?"

​"Isabella Vane just signed a three-page affidavit. She’s claiming she was the one who 'evacuated' you. She’s taking full responsibility for the data breach and the use of the Vane-Sovereignty protocols. Apparently, the court’s independence order gave her the legal right to do exactly what she did. And since she’s the one who was 'kidnapped,' we can't exactly charge you for it."

​I stood up, my knees stiff and my head spinning. I didn't care about the money. I didn't care about the missing three billion. I just wanted to see her.

​I walked out of the interview room and into the hallway. Isabella was standing by the water cooler, flanked by two uniformed officers. She was still in the clinical white dress, now grey with grime and torn at the hem. She looked exhausted, her eyes shadowed, but when she saw me, the exhaustion seemed to lift for a heartbeat.

​"You told them you kidnapped me?" I asked, stopping a foot away from her.

​"It was the only way to get them to stop asking about the Sterling Tower break-in," she said, a small, tired smile touching her lips. "I told them I forced you to climb the building. I’m a very demanding wife, Liam."

​"I'm going to have a hard time explaining that to a jury," I whispered.

​"There won't be a jury," she said, her voice dropping. She stepped closer, and I could smell the rain and the ozone on her. "Miller told me about the missing three billion."

​"He thinks I took it."

​"I know you didn't," she said. She reached into the pocket of her dress and pulled out a small, crumpled piece of paper—the one my father had given me when I was five. The Founder’s Share. "But you were right about the hardware key. It wasn't just a power grid override."

​"What was it?"

​"It was a ledger," she said. She turned the certificate over. In the fine print, the microscopic text that usually outlined the voting rights, there was a series of coordinates and a routing number for a bank in Zurich.

​"He didn't steal the money for Eleanor," I whispered, the realization hitting me like a physical blow. "He stole it from her."

​"He was building a lifeboat," Isabella said. "Not for the company. For us. He knew the merger was a trap the moment he signed it. He spent the last ten years of his life moving the stolen money into a trust that only the Founder's Share could unlock. It’s not Sterling money anymore. And it’s not Vane money."

​"It's Isabella's," I said.

​"It’s ours," she corrected. "But we can't touch it. Not yet. Not while Miller is watching."

​We walked out of the precinct and onto the sidewalk. The sun was fully up now, a bright, unforgiving light that made the city look like a collection of glass and steel fossils. There were no reporters here; the crowd was still gathered at the tower, waiting for the high-drama arrests.

​"Where do we go?" I asked. "I don't have a car. I don't have a house. I don't even have a phone."

​"We walk," Isabella said. "Until we find a place that doesn't have a name on the door."

​We started walking east, toward the river. We were two ghosts in the morning rush, ignored by the bankers and the couriers. My hands hurt, my chest felt hollow, and the future was a vast, terrifying blank. But as I felt Isabella’s hand slide into mine, her skin warm and real, the weight of the Sterling name felt like something I had dropped into the ocean.

​We reached a small park overlooking the water. We sat on a bench, watching the tugboats push their way through the grey current.

​"Liam?" she asked, after a long silence.

​"Yeah?"

​"What happens when the shunt's battery finally dies? Sarah said the reset would give me forty-eight hours of autonomy, but after that... the biological interface might reject the lack of data."

​"We find a doctor who doesn't work for a corporation," I said. "We find the man who built the original marrow-scaffold. He’s in Switzerland. That’s why the money is in Zurich, Isabella. It wasn't a retirement fund. It was a medical fund."

​"He planned it all," she said, looking out at the water. "My father. Your father. They were both monsters, but they were monsters who loved their children more than their legacies."

​"They were just men who were too late to be good," I said. "We don't have to be like them."

​"No," she said. "We don't."

​I looked at the share certificate in my hand. I could feel the gold-foil seal, the tiny button that had saved her life and destroyed my world. I folded it into a small square and tucked it into my shoe.

​"I have an idea," I said.

​"Is it a legal one?"

​"Probably not."

​"Good," she said. "I’m done with the law for today."

​We stood up and headed for the subway station. We didn't take the express. We took the local, a slow, rattling train that stopped at every station in the city. We sat in the corner of the car, our shoulders touching, watching the faces of the people who were just starting their day. They didn't know about the merger. They didn't know about the core. They just knew they were going to work.

​We got off at a station in Brooklyn I hadn't visited in twenty years—the neighborhood where my mother had grown up, before she met the 'King of Midtown.' It was a place of brick houses and small gardens, where the trees actually turned orange in the fall.

​"Who lives here?" Isabella asked, looking at the quiet street.

​"No one I know," I said. "And that’s the point."

​We found a small cafe that was just opening its doors. I used the last of the cash in my pocket to buy two coffees and a pastry. We sat at a tiny table by the window, the sun warming our faces.

​"What's your name?" I asked, looking at her over the rim of my cup.

​She paused, a thoughtful look in her eyes. "I think... I think I’d like to be Sarah. Not like Jenkins. Just... Sarah. It sounds quiet."

​"Sarah," I said, testing the weight of it. "It fits."

​"And you?"

​"I'm just a guy who’s good with numbers," I said. "Call me Lee."

​"Lee," she said, smiling for the first time without the shadow of the core. "It’s nice to meet you, Lee."

​The cliffhanger wasn't a threat; it was a realization. As I looked out the window, I saw a black sedan pull up across the street. It wasn't Miller. It wasn't the police.

​The door opened, and Marcus stepped out. He wasn't wearing his tactical gear. He was wearing a plain jacket and holding a thick, padded envelope. He looked around the street, his eyes locking onto the cafe.

​He didn't come in. He walked to the corner, dropped the envelope into a mailbox, and got back into the car. He drove away without a second look.

​I looked at the mailbox.

​"He’s still working," I whispered.

​"Who?"

​"The shadow," I said.

​I knew what was in that envelope. It wasn't more truth. It was the physical keys to the lifeboat. The game wasn't over. It had just moved to Brooklyn.