Chapter 27 - The Marionette's Strings
Beside the control console of the Silo Core gate, Julian found Marcus's remote hack finally breaking through the facility's encrypted network. The small holographic pad Julian carried chimed, downloading a massive dossier of files intercepted from the bunker's mainframe.
Julian looked down at the decrypted documents. What he saw made his blood run colder than any winter night.
This was not merely a revenge hit by an old syndicate survivor. The dossier contained banking transfers, wiretaps, and executive signatures from the highest echelons of Julian’s own global conglomerate—Vance Global Enterprises.
The plot went back months. The initial kidnapping of Maya at her private school had not been a random tragedy orchestrated by street thugs; it was a carefully plotted maneuver engineered by Julian’s own board of directors, funded through black-ops offshore accounts, and executed by Julian's former mentor: Alistair Kane.
Kane was the man who had brought Julian into the shadow syndicate twenty years ago. The man who had trained him to be the world's most ruthless operative, and the man Julian had believed died in the burning ruin of the Black Sea safehouse.
*"You see the paper trail now, don't you, Julian?"* Kane's voice purred directly over the intercom console beside the gate. *"Your legitimate empire... built with the blood money of the underworld. Did you really think those billionaire board members would let you walk away into the sunlight while holding all the keys to the vault? They paid me thirty million dollars to erase you. And taking your daughter was the only bait strong enough to bring the legendary ghost out of his fortress."*
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Julian stared at the heavy vault door. His voice was steady, calm, and terrifyingly cold.
"Alistair," Julian whispered. "You should have asked for more money."
