Chapter 4 - TWENTY YEARS OF SILENCE
"Put the detonator down, Olivia," Salvatore said calmly, keeping his distance, though every instinct shouted at him to pull his sister into a safe house and get her away from the estate.
"I can't do that, Little Brother," Olivia said, a small, sad smile touching her lips. "If I don't press this button tonight, Edmund’s buyers in London will execute the transfer. They have the secondary codes. The ledger you hold is only half the key."
"Who are the buyers?" Salvatore asked, taking half a step forward.
"The Board," Olivia replied, her voice filled with quiet contempt. "The same men who funded father's expansion. The men who turned our family shipping line into a international smuggling network for military technology and unregistered gold."
She looked down at Marina, who had stepped around Salvatore to stand beside her mother. The child reached out, taking Olivia’s free hand without a trace of fear.
"Marina did her job perfectly," Olivia murmured, stroking her daughter's rain-soaked hair. "She brought you to the book."
"How did you survive?" Salvatore demanded. "Eight years ago... the car found in the loch..."
"Edmund set that trap," Olivia said, her eyes turning cold as ice. "He thought I was in that vehicle. He ordered the brakes cut because I refused to sign the offshore trust transfers. I escaped through the water, but I knew if I came back, he’d hunt me down—and he’d use Marina as leverage. So I let him believe I was dead. I stayed in the dark, gathering evidence, building a network of allies inside his own syndicate."
"Victor Lane was one of them," Salvatore realized aloud. "The corporate adviser who tried to leak the shipping ledgers six months ago."
"Victor was my asset," Olivia confirmed. "Edmund caught him and had him locked in the old coal cellars beneath the east wing. He’s still down there, Salvatore. Edmund has been keeping him alive just enough to extract the access passwords."
Salvatore’s jaw tightened. The madness running through the veins of the Vance family was deeper and more poisonous than he had ever imagined.
"If you detonate the sub-basement," Salvatore said, "you destroy the digital servers, but you also destroy the evidence that can put Edmund’s backers behind bars for the rest of their lives. Give me the ledger, give me the satellite key, and let me handle the federal task force."
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Olivia hesitated, her grip tightening on the detonator. "You think the law can touch these men, Salvatore? They own the regulators. They own the ports!"
"They don't own me," Salvatore said, stepping into the space between them and extending his open palm. "And they don't own your daughter. Give me the key, Olivia. Let’s end this the right way."
