Chapter 7 - The Mastermind's Betrayal
Kane slowly turned his head, his gun still pointed at me, his brow furrowing in confusion.
"Arthur?" Kane asked, his tone laced with disbelief. "What are you doing? I'm securing the ledger. The maid is Dr. Vance—she has Emma's secondary research files!"
"I know who she is, Marcus," Arthur said, his voice flat, devoid of all human warmth. "And I know what's inside that ledger."
Arthur stepped into the dim lightbulb's glow. His expensive tuxedo was immaculate, his grey hair neatly combed, but his eyes were entirely dead.
"You see, Andrew," Arthur said, looking at me with a sickening sense of detachment. "Marcus here was a very efficient soldier. But soldiers become sloppy when they get greedy."
"Arthur, I followed your exact instructions!" Kane barked, his calm posture finally cracking into panic.
"My instructions were to convince Emma to sell her shares," Arthur corrected coldly, raising his revolver higher. "My instructions were not to push my only daughter down a flight of stone stairs because she made you angry during an argument!"
The truth hung in the air like heavy smoke.
Arthur hadn't ordered Emma's murder. Kane had panicked when Emma threatened him with arrest, taking matters into his own hands—and Arthur had spent the last four months covering up the crime to protect his company's public valuation.
"You covered for him," I said, disgust rising in my throat. "Your daughter was murdered, and you helped her killer hide the truth!"
"If the truth came out four months ago, Vance-James BioTech would have gone bankrupt!" Arthur shouted, his composure shattering for a fraction of a second. "The buyout would have collapsed! Everything I built over forty years would have been destroyed by a scandal! I did what I had to do to protect the empire!"
"You're a monster," Elizabeth whispered from behind me, holding the dusty ledger tightly against her ribs.
"I am a realist, Dr. Vance," Arthur snapped. He turned his revolver slightly, holding both Kane and me in his field of fire. "And now, Marcus, you are going to hand your gun to Andrew. Then you are going to take your car, drive to the airport, and take the private jet to Paraguay. You take the blame for Emma's death. I will transfer ten million dollars to your offshore account the moment you land."
Kane stared at Arthur, realizing he had just been turned into the ultimate scapegoat.
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"And if I refuse?" Kane asked, his hand holding the silenced 9mm trembling with rage.
"If you refuse," Arthur said smoothly, "I shoot you right now, tell the police you broke in to steal corporate files, and Andrew here will testify that I saved his life."
