“Listen to me very carefully, little sister,” he hissed, his breath hot against my face. “You have until tomorrow morning to stand before that board and officially decline the inheritance. You will tell our father the pressure is too much. You will walk away. Because if you don’t, the next time my Lamborghini finds you in a crosswalk, I won’t hit the brakes. And your bastard child will die with you.”
He shoved my arm away, disgusted.
As he turned to leave, a sickening realization crashed over me.
“My mother,” I breathed, the words tearing from my throat before I could stop them. “The car crash two months ago. She was an amazing driver. She never drove off the road in the rain. Did you…?”
Arthur paused at the door. He didn’t look back. He just adjusted his cuffs.
“Wet roads are so dangerous,” Arthur said softly. “You should be much more careful with your own health, Sarah.”
He pulled a small silver phone from his pocket, tapping a few commands on the screen. A sharp digital chime echoed in the quiet library.
“Oh, by the way,” Arthur added, glancing over his shoulder. “I know you saw the dashcam this morning. The Urus uploads all internal and external footage to the Vance Tech secure cloud instantly. I just authorized a permanent, unrecoverable wipe of the servers. Your evidence is gone. You have nothing.”
Marcus opened the door, and the two men walked out, leaving me locked in the dark.
I fell back into the chair, gripping my stomach, realizing with terrifying clarity that I was not just fighting for a company. I was fighting for my life against a man who had already murdered my mother.
CHAPTER 3
The library was silent, save for the frantic, ragged sound of my own breathing. I pressed my hands against my face, trying to stop the tears of absolute despair. Arthur had murdered my mother. He had tried to kill my child. And tomorrow morning, he was going to stand in front of the board and use his fabricated lies to steal everything Richard Vance wanted to give me, before inevitably tying up his last remaining loose end. Me.
He had wiped the cloud. He was a tech CEO; his word on digital security was law. I had no witnesses who would dare speak against him. I had no proof.
You have nothing, his voice echoed in my head.
I opened my eyes, staring into the dark corner of the room. My mother had raised a fighter. When the electricity was shut off, she taught me how to read by candlelight. When the world pushed us down, she taught me how to plant my feet and push back harder.
I remembered the brutal impact in the crosswalk. I remembered the heavy, violent roar of the Lamborghini. And I remembered the blinking red light of the 360-degree dash camera mounted on the console.
I pulled my phone from my pocket and texted Sterling: Get back to the library. Now.
Sterling arrived five minutes later, his face pale with concern when he saw the terror and resolve burning in my eyes.
“Sarah? Did Arthur come in here?” Sterling asked, locking the door behind him.
“He killed my mother, Thomas,” I said, my voice eerily calm. “He admitted he forced her off the road. He hit me today as a warning. And he just wiped the Vance Tech cloud server from his phone. He erased the dashcam footage from this morning.”
Sterling collapsed heavily against the edge of a mahogany reading table, running a shaking hand over his face. “Good god. Richard’s own son. The board… the board will believe Arthur’s extortion story without proof, Sarah. If the cloud is wiped, we have absolutely no evidence to show them at the nine a.m. vote tomorrow. We’ve lost.”
“No, we haven't,” I said, standing up. “My mother couldn't afford new cars. We drove beaters. I had to learn how to fix them just so we could get to school and work. I know cars, Thomas.”
I stepped closer to him, lowering my voice.
“Arthur drives a 2025 Lamborghini Urus Performante. That car is a sixty-hundred-horsepower missile. To even get it insured, the manufacturer requires a secondary, physical 'black box' hard drive installed directly under the center console. It records locally, separate from the cloud backup, in case of catastrophic signal failure during a crash.”
Sterling stared at me, a spark of dangerous hope lighting in his tired eyes. “A physical drive. If he wiped the cloud from his phone, he might not have physically destroyed the internal box yet.”
“Where is his car right now?” I asked.
“It’s parked in the estate’s subterranean executive garage. Arthur stays in the east wing guest house. But the garage is heavily monitored by his personal security.” Sterling checked his watch. It was past midnight. “I have a trusted private investigator on retainer. He’s ex-military, handles my corporate espionage sweeps. He could extract it.”
“Call him,” I said.
By two a.m., the sprawling Vance estate was completely silent. I waited in the dark library, watching the minutes tick by on my phone, my nerves stretched so tight I felt like I might snap in half. Every creak of the floorboards above sounded like Arthur coming back to finish the job.
The door clicked open. A man in dark clothes slipped in. It was Cole, Sterling’s investigator, carrying a specialized canvas tool bag.
“The exterior patrols just shifted to the perimeter,” Cole whispered. “I have a five-minute window to access the executive garage before Marcus makes his internal rounds. I need to know exactly which panels to pull on the Urus console. I don't have time to hunt for it.”
“I’m coming with you,” I said, moving toward the door.
“Absolutely not,” Sterling hissed from the shadows. “Sarah, you’re pregnant. If Arthur catches you down there—”
“I’m the only one who knows the exact wiring configuration for the Performante’s secondary box,” I cut him off, my voice harder than I knew I was capable of. “If Cole pulls the wrong harness, he triggers the localized anti-tamper alarm, and Marcus will be on us in seconds. I have to guide him.”