Chapter 19 - The Ghost in the Machine
"Dissolved?" Alexander scoffed, his voice dripping with icy contempt. "You don't have the jurisdiction to dissolve an international maritime trust confirmed by the High Court of Geneva."
"In international waters, jurisdiction belongs to whoever controls the automated navigational beacons," Vivienne replied, completely unbothered. She gestured toward the glass wall. Across the dark waters of the Singapore Strait, the distant red lights of the immobilized cargo ships blinked in the haze. "As we speak, forty billion dollars of automated freight is stalled. At midnight, the Singapore Port Authority will declare those vessels navigational hazards and tow them into sovereign impoundment. Moretti Global will face catastrophic supply-chain penalties. You will be bankrupt before the markets open in London."
I watched Vivienne closely. As a physician, I had spent years reading involuntary physiological cues—the subtle micro-expressions of patients hiding pain, the dilation of pupils in moments of sudden panic or deception.
Vivienne was calm, but her left hand remained tightly clenched on the carved armrest of her chair, her knuckles white. And every time the lights on the ships flickered, her eyes darted not toward the window, but toward the shadows near the corner of the dining room.
Someone else was in the room.
"You didn't write that override code, Madam Chen," Leo said suddenly, breaking the heavy silence.
Vivienne's cold gaze snapped toward my son. "Excuse me?"
Leo had pulled his small tablet from his jacket pocket and placed it beside the jade seal. "I’ve been monitoring the signal latency of the transponder locks for the last twenty minutes. The routing signals aren't originating from your servers here in Sentosa. They're being bounced through an encrypted proxy located in a commercial data hub right here in downtown Singapore."
Leo looked up, his gray eyes shining with absolute clarity. "You aren't controlling those ships. Someone is using your name and your old family grievance as a shield while they siphon the transit algorithms."
Alexander stiffened, instantly realizing the terrifying implication. "Julian!" he called out.
Before Julian could step through the courtyard doors, the heavy mahogany double doors at the rear of the dining room swung open.
A tall, impeccably dressed man stepped into the room. He was in his mid-forties, with slicked-back hair and a cruel, sardonic smile playing across his lips.
"Clever boy," the man applauded slowly, the sound echoing off the stone walls. "He really does have Arthur's cursed intellect."
Alexander stood up so violently his chair scraped against the marble floor. "Leonard Hayes."
My breath caught. *Leonard Hayes.* Olivia Hayes’s older brother—the disgraced former chief financial officer of Moretti Global’s Pacific division, who was supposed to be serving a five-year sentence in a white-collar federal penitentiary in Pennsylvania.
"You broke federal custody?" Alexander growled, taking a protective step in front of Claire and Leo.
"Let’s just say that Swiss bankers and Singaporean syndicates have very long reaches when forty billion dollars is at stake," Leonard said, strolling toward the table with supreme arrogance. He cast a dismissive glance at Vivienne Chen. "Thank you for setting the stage, Vivienne. But the old woman's part in this play is finished."
Two armed men in tactical gear stepped out from behind Leonard, their submachine guns pointed directly at Alexander and Julian.
"Leonard, what is this?" Vivienne demanded, her composure finally shattering as she rose from her chair. "Our agreement was a legal transfer of the Song transit rights!"
"Our agreement was whatever I told you to get these three into this room," Leonard snapped. He turned his cold, venomous gaze toward me. "Claire Bennett. Fifteen years ago, you walked away with nothing, like the pathetic little martyr you are. If you had just stayed gone, my sister would be Mrs. Alexander Moretti today, and the Hayes family would control the largest shipping conglomerate on earth."
"Your sister is a thief and an attempted murderer," I said, my voice steady despite the adrenaline coursing through my veins. "And you are nothing more than a parasite hiding behind her wreckage."
Leonard’s eyes narrowed into slits of pure malice. "Call me whatever you want, Claire. But in ten minutes, your brilliant son is going to place his hand on that biometric jade console and transfer the entire Song-Moretti master encryption key to my account."
May you like
He raised his hand, and one of his gunmen aimed his weapon directly at my forehead.
"Transfer the keys, Leo," Leonard commanded, his voice cold and flat. "Or your mother dies right in front of you."