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 78 / 121

Chapter 78 - The Cold Nursery

Finch reached beneath the podium, his hand darting toward an emergency release toggle.

I fired a single round.

The bullet drilled through the polished mahogany, shattering Finch’s right hand into a bloody ruin. He shrieked, clutching his mangled wrist to his chest, stumbling backward against the panoramic glass.

"Don't!" he wailed, his face pale as chalk, sweat beading on his forehead. "You don't understand what you're doing, Mrs. Vance! The failsafe—if my vitals flatline, the quarantine ward purges! Halon gas floods the entire sector! Your children will suffocate in sixty seconds!"

I stopped three paces from him. The surviving bidders had already scrambled through the emergency exits, fleeing like rats into the mountain tunnels, leaving only the dead guards, the smell of cordite, and the whimpering architect of my family's destruction.

"Then you had better keep your heart beating, Alistair," I said calmly.

I reached out, grabbed him by his silk necktie, and hauled him toward the central console. His blood smeared across the glass touchscreens.

"The override code," I demanded, pressing the smoking barrel of my rifle into his temple. "Unlock Room 402."

"I... I can't," Finch wheezed, his eyes darting toward the holographic display. "It’s not just an unlock code. The system requires an authorization key from Arthur’s personal ledger. Arthur Vance... he was the legal guardian registered in the collateral protocol! Without his biometric confirmation, the console will reject the input!"

A bitter, cold smile touched my lips beneath the mask.

"Arthur?" I whispered.

I reached into my assault vest and pulled out a small, vacuum-sealed plastic bag. Inside was the encrypted thumb-drive we had extracted from Arthur's penthouse in Zurich before we sent him to the black site—along with a silicone cast of my brother-in-law's right thumb, taken while he sat bound in a chair begging for his life.

Finch’s eyes widened in horror. "You... you already took him."

"Arthur sold my children for thirty million dollars and a seat at your table," I said, slotting the drive into the console's USB port and pressing the silicone thumb against the optical scanner. "Did you really think I would leave him with all ten fingers?"

The terminal let out a sharp, melodic chime: *PRIMARY GUARDIAN IDENTIFIED: ARTHUR VANCE. AUTHORIZATION ACCEPTED.*

"Now," I leaned close to Finch's ear, "enter your executive override, or I will let Ethan feed you into the accelerator shaft feet first."

Trembling, sobbing through his teeth, Finch reached out with his left hand and entered a twelve-digit alphanumeric string.

The main screen flashed green: *ISOLATION PROTOCOL DEACTIVATED. SECTOR 4 MAGNETIC SEALS DISENGAGED.*

Over the tactical coms in my ear, Ethan’s voice crackled through the static: *"Claire! The doors just unlocked! The airlock is open!"*

The tension that had held my spine rigid for six months cracked.

"Ethan," I breathed into the radio, my voice trembling for the first time. "Are they...?"

*"They’re alive,"* Ethan said, and I could hear the rough emotion in the former mercenary's voice. *"Leo is opening his eyes. Maya is awake. They’re scared, Claire, but they’re alive."*

Tears burned behind my eyelids, but I did not let them fall. Not yet.

I looked at Lord Finch. He was slumped against the console, holding his bleeding hand, looking up at me with pathetic, pleading eyes. "I gave you what you wanted, Claire. Take them and leave. There's a helicopter on Pad B—"

"You took six months of my life," I said softly. "You made me bury two empty boxes. You made me look at the ground and wish I was underneath it."

"Claire, please—"

I didn't waste a bullet.

I drove the butt of my rifle with crushing force directly into the side of his skull. Finch’s eyes rolled back, and he collapsed onto the blood-slicked floor, unconscious and broken.