My Parents Skipped the Funeral of My Husband and Two Children for My Sister’s Birthday, but Six Months Later, One Headline Made Them Panic When They Discovered What I Had Done. / Chapter 34 / 121

Chapter 34 - The Puppet Master’s Toll

A heavy thud echoed from the entrance behind us. Two federal marshals dragged a thrashing, bloodied figure down the iron stairs.

It was Arthur Vance. His designer suit was ripped to shreds, his left arm immobilized in a field splint, and his face bruised a deep, mottled purple. But his mouth still curled with that venomous, aristocratic arrogance that had defined the Vance family for generations.

"Throw him down," Marcus ordered.

The marshals dropped Arthur onto the wet concrete. He groaned, spitting a mouthful of red saliva onto my boots. He looked up, his bloodshot eyes darting from me to Ethan, who stood ten yards away, shielding the children behind his back.

"You think... you’ve won, Claire?" Arthur wheezed, a pathetic, rattling laugh shaking his chest. "You think you’re walking out of here to live in some white-picket fantasy with your resurrected family?"

I stepped forward, pressing the steel toe of my boot directly against his fractured collarbone. Arthur gasped in agony, his eyes bulging.

"The radio on the cliff," I whispered, leaning down until my face was inches from his. "Who was on that frequency, Arthur? Who owns the ship sitting in the channel?"

"Go to hell," he hissed.

I applied more pressure. The bone groaned beneath his skin. Arthur shrieked, thrashing against the floor.

"Claire, stop," Ethan said quietly from the shadows. "He won't break for pain. He’s already dead in their eyes."

Ethan stepped forward, his gait unsteady but his presence commanding. He looked down at the man who had kept him in a sensory deprivation tank, who had forged death certificates for his children, who had destroyed our lives for quarterly profit.

"The bio-encryption key," Ethan said, his voice dropping into a deadly, monotone register. "You told them I cracked the double-blind sequence, didn't you? You took a seventy-million-dollar advance from the Directorate and told them the prototype was ready."

Arthur’s smug expression flickered, replaced by a sudden, naked terror.

"You lied to them, Arthur," Ethan continued coldly. "You told them I was cooperating. But the algorithm in the vault isn't a bio-weapon cipher. It’s an audit trail. Every transaction. Every offshore routing number. Every politician, judge, and family member you paid off to keep our 'deaths' quiet."

Arthur’s breath hitched. "No... you couldn't have..."

"I wrote it into the base code before your men even grabbed me from our home," Ethan said. "The moment that drive connects to an external network, it broadcasts to the Department of Justice, the Hague, and Interpol simultaneously. And guess whose signature is on the primary authorization contract?"

Arthur began to shake. "Ethan... please..."