Chapter 5 - The Web of Deceit
While Dr. Eleanor’s team monitored the girls in the master suite, Ethan descended to his private basement office—a reinforced, soundproof fortress equipped with high-speed secure servers and direct feeds to Whitmore Systems' internal networks.
He sat down at his glass desk, activated his encrypted terminal, and pulled up the security logs for the Aspen estate over the past six months.
When Ethan had left for Europe, he had installed an internal security camera network for the girls' safety. Bianca had assured him four months ago that the system was broken due to a lightning strike and needed full replacement.
Ethan hadn't replaced it; he had simply bypassed her local router and kept the feed running to an isolated server in Switzerland.
He opened the video archives.
What he saw over the next three hours burned into his brain like hot acid.
He watched footage from August: Bianca screaming at the four four-year-old girls for dropping a glass of milk, forcing them to stand in the cold garage for two hours as punishment.
He watched footage from October: Bianca firing the long-time head nanny, Mrs. Gable—a warm, grandmotherly woman Clara had chosen—because Mrs. Gable had caught Bianca bringing Marcus Vance into the master bedroom while Ethan was in Frankfurt.
He watched footage from November: Marcus Vance sitting at Ethan’s desk in this very mansion, drinking Ethan’s vintage scotch, while Bianca handed him USB drives containing encrypted source code for Whitmore Systems' new defense software.
"You arrogant fools," Ethan whispered, watching Marcus laugh as he kissed Bianca across his desk.
Marcus Vance was not just Ethan’s Chief Operating Officer; he was Ethan’s college roommate, the man Ethan had brought into the company fifteen years ago, the man he had given five percent equity to, the man he had considered a brother.
Marcus and Bianca hadn't just met eighteen months ago when Ethan introduced them.
Ethan opened a secondary file—a forensic digital footprint analysis his private intelligence team in London had compiled over the last forty-eight hours.
They had known each other for five years.
Bianca had been Marcus’s secret girlfriend long before Clara died. When Clara passed away from leukemia, Marcus had deliberately orchestrated Bianca’s entry into Ethan’s social circle, positioning her as a sweet, grieving preschool teacher who volunteered at the local children's hospital.
It had all been a long, calculated play.
The goal was simple: get Bianca married to Ethan, isolate the four daughters, slowly drain Ethan’s personal accounts, copy the proprietary defense algorithms, and then initiate an emergency board vote to declare Ethan mentally unfit due to grief, placing Bianca as the trustee of his estate and Marcus as the acting CEO of Whitmore Systems.
They were planning to commit Ethan to a private psychiatric facility in Switzerland by the spring.
And the girls?
Ethan zoomed in on a clip from two weeks ago. Marcus was standing in the dining room, looking at the four girls shivering at the table.
“We need to make sure they look neglected,” Marcus’s voice came clearly through the high-definition audio feed. “When we launch the legal incompetence suit against Ethan, we present the girls’ state to Child Protective Services. We claim Ethan’s severe depression led him to abuse them, while Bianca tried her best to save them. The court will hand full custody and trust control to Bianca instantly.”
Ethan stared at the screen.
They weren't just neglecting his daughters out of cruelty; they were deliberately starving four five-year-old girls to use their frail bodies as evidence to steal his life’s work.
Ethan slowly leaned back in his leather chair.
He didn't scream. He didn't break down.
A quiet, terrifying calmness washed over him. The grief, the guilt, the horror—it all solidified into a single, crystalline purpose.
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He pulled up his encrypted messaging application and sent a single text to Julian Sterling, the director of a private security and intelligence firm operating out of Virginia.
“Julian. Initiate Protocol Blackout. I need team Alpha in Aspen by 0600. Team Beta in New York at corporate headquarters. The hunt begins today.”
