Chapter 20: Chloe's Desperation

The ninety-minute countdown appeared on the command center's main monitor in stark white numbers, a digital hourglass bleeding seconds into the void. I had three screens active simultaneously: Calloway's public-facing investor portal, the encrypted message logs from their PR team, and the estate's internal security feed, which I'd kept running in the corner of my display out of paranoid habit. Devon was beside me, coordinating with Vortex's legal team on a parallel strategy—if Helena spun the narrative, we'd need a counter-spin ready within minutes.

"There's no vulnerability in their external comms," I said, frustration bleeding into my voice. "Helena's locked everything down. Their press release distribution is routed through a third-party service I can't touch. Their investor portal is read-only. Their social media accounts are managed by a PR firm with military-grade security."

"She's not leaving us any openings." Devon didn't look up from his tablet. "What about their domain infrastructure? DNS records, email servers, anything that touches the public internet?"

"I've scanned everything. She's patched every hole I would have exploited. It's like she built their security architecture specifically to counter me."

"Because she did." Devon set down his tablet, his silver eyes meeting mine. "She trained you. She knows your methods. She's spent two years hardening Calloway against the exact attacks you'd attempt."

I slammed my palm against the desk, the sting of impact cutting through my exhaustion. "Then I need a method she didn't teach me. Something she can't predict. Something—"

A flicker of movement on the security feed caught my eye.

I turned to the monitor, zooming in on the corridor outside the west wing server room. A woman in a staff uniform—no, not a staff uniform. A dress that was trying too hard to look like a staff uniform, cut slightly too low, hemmed slightly too high. Chloe.

She was talking to a young man I recognized: Derek, a junior IT technician who'd been hired three months ago to handle routine server maintenance. He was twenty-three, shy, and visibly uncomfortable as Chloe leaned against the wall beside him, her body language a parody of seduction.

"I didn't know you worked in this wing," Chloe was saying, her voice carrying through the surveillance feed with nauseating sweetness. "It must be so lonely down here. All these empty corridors. All these servers humming away with no one to appreciate them."

Derek shifted his weight, his eyes darting toward the server room door. "I'm not supposed to let anyone into the server wing without authorization. It's restricted access."

"I'm not anyone. I'm family." Chloe's smile was a blade wrapped in silk. "Julian Vance's fiancée. Well, ex-fiancée now, I suppose, given recent events. But still. Family."

"I don't know... Mrs. Cordelia always said—"

"Cordelia is in federal prison, Derek. The rules have changed." Chloe stepped closer, her fingers brushing his arm. "I just need to check something. A file. It would take five minutes. No one would ever know."

I watched the scene unfold with cold, clinical detachment. Chloe was trying to access the servers. Not just any servers—the Vortex internal systems where I'd been storing the Eidos evidence chain. She was desperate, flailing, trying to salvage something from the wreckage of Cordelia's conspiracy. And she was using the same tools she'd always used: manipulation, seduction, the weaponized vulnerability of a woman who'd learned early that her body was currency.

"I have to go," I said, rising from my chair.

Devon caught my wrist. "The press conference is in eighty-three minutes. We don't have time for—"

"She's trying to access the evidence. The Eidos files. If she gets into those servers, even for five minutes, she could delete everything we've built. The repository fork. The licensing agreements. The payment trail." I met his eyes. "I'll be back in ten minutes. Keep monitoring Calloway's comms. If Helena makes a move before I return, message me."

Devon hesitated, then released my wrist. "Make it hurt."

"That's the plan."

I intercepted Chloe in the corridor outside the server wing, stepping out of the hidden elevator just as she was reaching for Derek's access card. The young IT technician nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw me. Chloe simply froze, her hand suspended in midair, her expression flickering through shock, fury, and then a practiced mask of wounded innocence.

"Anya. I was just—"

"I know exactly what you were doing, Chloe." My voice was ice. "Derek, go back to your station. You're not in trouble. You were targeted by a predator, and you did the right thing by hesitating. I'll make sure your supervisor knows."

Derek fled with visible relief. The corridor fell silent, just the two of us standing in the cold fluorescent light. Chloe's mask of innocence crumbled, replaced by something uglier.

"You think you've won," she said, her voice dropping the sweetness like a discarded costume. "You think because Cordelia's in prison and Julian's in custody, you're safe. But you're not safe, Anya. You've never been safe. And you never will be."

"I know about the deepfake." I watched the blood drain from her face. "I know you provided the photographs. I know you helped Cordelia commission a fabricated sex tape to destroy my reputation. I know you agreed to perjure yourself in front of the board. And I know you just tried to seduce a junior IT technician into giving you access to restricted servers."

Chloe's mouth opened, but no sound came out.

"I also have your embezzlement confession," I continued, my voice flat and surgical. "The signed document. The bank records. The audit trail. The evidence that you stole twenty thousand dollars from your dying father's medical practice. Lydia Harmon has already verified its authenticity. The board has already seen it. Your credibility is ash."

"Then why am I still here?" Chloe's voice cracked, the vulnerability finally real. "If you have everything you need to destroy me, why haven't you done it?"

"Because I'm giving you a choice."

I stepped closer, close enough to see the flecks of mascara clumping at the corners of her eyes, the faint tremble of her lower lip. She was afraid. Good. Fear made people honest.

"Disappear," I said. "Tonight. Take whatever money Julian left you, pack your things, and vanish. Leave the estate. Leave the city. Leave the country if you can. I don't care where you go, as long as you're gone before the gala."

"And if I refuse?"

"Then I release the embezzlement confession to every news outlet that covered my arrest. I release the deepfake evidence, including your role in providing the photographs. I release the recordings of you conspiring with Julian to commit perjury. And I file a criminal complaint with the FBI for attempted computer intrusion, based on what I just witnessed with Derek." I paused, letting the weight of each word settle. "You'll face federal charges, Chloe. Real charges. Not the manufactured fraud Julian used against me. By the time I'm finished, you won't just be disgraced. You'll be imprisoned."

Chloe's composure shattered. She stumbled backward, her shoulder hitting the corridor wall, her breath coming in short, ragged gasps. "You can't do this. You can't just erase me."

"I'm not erasing you. I'm giving you a chance to erase yourself. It's more than you ever gave me."

"I was helping Julian. I loved him."

"You loved his money. You loved his status. You loved the idea of being a Vance, even if it meant destroying your own stepsister to get there." I stepped back, putting distance between us. "You have until midnight. If you're still on the estate at 12:01 AM, I release everything. No second chances. No negotiations."

Chloe stared at me, her eyes wet and wild. For a moment, I thought she might break down entirely—collapse into the weeping, apologetic mess she'd performed so many times before. But instead, something else surfaced. Something cold and reptilian that slithered beneath the tears.

"You think you're so clever," she whispered. "You think you've figured everything out. Julian. Cordelia. Me. But you don't know everything, Anya. You don't know what's really happening. What's been happening since the beginning."

"Then enlighten me."

"Marcus knows about your mother." Chloe's smile was a wound. "He knows what really happened to her. And he's going to use it against you at the gala. That's what Cordelia was holding over him. That's why he agreed to work with her. Because she knows the truth about your mother's death, and so does he."

The words hit me like a physical blow. My mother. The woman who'd died when I was nine years old, in a car accident that had always been described as a tragic, ordinary collision on a rain-slicked highway. The woman whose death had shattered my father, opened the door for my stepmother, set the stage for every betrayal that followed.

"What about my mother?" My voice was barely a whisper.

But Chloe was already backing away, her smile widening into something feral. "Ask Marcus. At the gala. If you survive that long."

She turned and fled down the corridor, her footsteps echoing in the silence she left behind.

I didn't chase her. I couldn't move. My mother's face swam in my memory—dark hair like mine, hazel eyes like mine, a laugh that had felt like safety in a world that would soon become anything but safe. She'd died in a car accident. That was the official story. That was what I'd believed for seventeen years.

Marcus knows the truth about your mother's death.

If that was true, then nothing I believed about my own life was real.

I don't remember returning to the command center. I remember Devon's hands on my shoulders, his voice sharp with concern. I remember the press conference starting on the monitor, Helena Voss's face appearing on screen—elegant, silver-haired, smiling the smile of a woman who believed she'd already won.

I remember Chloe's room, checked by security at 11 PM, found empty except for a handwritten note on the pillow.

Marcus knows about your mother. He's known all along. —C

And I remember Devon reading the note over my shoulder, his jaw tightening, his hand finding mine with the fierce, protective grip of a man who'd just realized the war was bigger than either of us had imagined.

"We'll find out the truth," he said. "Whatever it is. We'll face it together."

I stared at the note, at Helena's face frozen on the monitor, at the countdown clock that now read zero.

"We're not just fighting for revenge anymore," I said. "We're fighting for answers. And I'm going to get them, even if I have to burn Marcus Calloway to the ground to do it."

The gala was fourteen days away.

And the truth about my mother was waiting for me there.