Chapter 22 - The Phantom Account
The realization hit me like a physical blow. If Lauren was alive, she had allowed me to believe she was dead. She had let me fight Julian Vance alone, let me stand in that courtroom with a target painted on my back, let me risk our babies' lives in the line of fire.
"Why would she vanish?" I whispered in Marcus's dimly lit study, surrounded by surveillance maps and financial records. "If Vance didn't kill her, was she his partner all along?"
"No," Marcus said firmly, spreading a series of newly cracked bank ledgers across his desk. "Look at the transaction timestamps, Clara. If Lauren were Vance’s partner, she wouldn't have drained his covert Cayman off-shore fund twenty minutes *before* the fire broke out at the Apex compound."
My eyes snapped to the highlighted lines. Exactly twenty minutes before the alarm sounded at the compound, an offshore account named *L.M. Phoenix* was emptied: forty-two million dollars wire-transferred into twelve decentralized digital wallets across Zurich, Singapore, and Panama.
The authorization was verified through biometric retinal scanning. Only two people on Earth possessed the identical retinal vascular structure required to authorize that bypass: myself, and my identical twin sister.
"She faked her own death using Vance’s money," I whispered. "She played him."
"She didn't just play him; she broke him," Marcus pointed out. "Vance thought he had her trapped as a breeding surrogate to secure the Mercer family trust. When she realized Vance was going to dispose of her once the child was born, Lauren executed an extraction plan that scorched the earth behind her."
Just then, Marcus’s private secure terminal beeped. An encrypted incoming transmission breached his firewalls, bypassing the Department of Justice secure gateway.
A single video file appeared on the desktop, stamped with that morning’s date.
Marcus hovered the mouse over it, his combat instincts on high alert. "This didn't come from Vance’s network. It originated from a server relay stationed in the North Atlantic."
"Open it," I said, my voice barely audible.
Marcus clicked play.
The monitor flickered to life. A dimly lit cabin appeared on screen, pine walls and rain lashing against a small window. Sitting in a wooden chair, her dark hair cut short and a faint scar running along her jawline, was Lauren.
She looked directly into the camera lens, her eyes brimming with unshed tears.
May you like
"Clara," she spoke, and the sound of her voice made the breath catch in my throat. "If you are watching this, Vance’s trial is over, and you know the truth about the urn. I don't expect you to forgive me. But you need to pack your things and leave New York tonight. Vance wasn't the master. He was just the dog on the leash. And the real master is coming for the children."
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