Chapter 10 - THE CODE IN THE COLD
The slap on my cheek burned, but the ice settling in my veins went far deeper.
I turned my head slowly to look at my father. "Dad? You saw me last Thanksgiving. We spent four hours fixing your truck in the driveway while Lila was passed out drunk upstairs. You know she’s lying."
Richard Vance rubbed his temples. He looked old, broken, and utterly cowardly.
"Maya, just... just sign the papers," he mumbled, staring resolutely at the hardwood floor between his shoes. "Lila has a future. Jake’s family has connections. If this blows up, Jake’s family will annul the marriage, and Lila’s reputation will be ruined. You’re resilient, Maya. You always land on your feet. Just let her have this one."
*Just let her have this one.*
Like I let her have my college fund.
Like I let her have Dad’s car.
Like I let her take the credit for my high school science fair scholarship when she needed a bump on her college application.
A strange, liberating calm washed over me. The suffocating guilt I had carried for thirty years—the desperate, pathetic need to earn my mother’s approval, to be the "good daughter"—evaporated into thin air.
There was no family here. There was only a parasite, its enablers, and the host they had bled dry.
"No," I said.
Mom’s eyes flashed with rage. "What did you say?"
"I said no," I replied, standing tall, my voice steady and cold as steel. "I won't sign over my work. I won't take the fall for your golden child’s felony. And when the federal indictments come down on Monday, Mom? Don't call me to bail her out."
I turned on my heel and walked toward the door.
"Maya Vance, you walk out that door and you are dead to me!" Mom shrieked behind me. "You hear me? You have no family! You will rot in a cell alone!"
I opened the heavy door, stepped into the hallway, and let it slam shut behind me.
Elias was leaning against the opposite wall, his arms crossed over his chest. He pushed himself off the drywall, his gray eyes scanning my reddened cheek. A dark, dangerous shadow flickered across his expression.
"She hit you," he stated. It wasn't a question.
"It doesn't matter," I said, wiping a single stray tear from my face before it could fall. "She showed me who they are. All of them."
"Are you ready?" Elias asked.
"For what?"
"To stop playing defense," he said, turning toward the private elevators. "Vincent Kane just initiated a forced decryption protocol on the stolen drive. They think they’ve bypassed our security gate. In thirty minutes, they’re going to attempt to inject the compiled source engine into Meridian’s central clearing network."
"They can't do that," I gasped, keeping pace with his long strides. "The algorithm uses a recursive self-destruct function! If they execute it without the master parity validation, it’ll corrupt—"
"It’ll corrupt their entire financial database," Elias finished my sentence with a grim smirk. "Unless they have someone feeding them the live validation strings in real time."
He hit the elevator button, the doors chiming open.
"And who do you think Kane is planning to use to force you to give up those strings?" Elias asked.
"Lila," I realized, the horror dawning on me. "She doesn't know the code is rigged."
May you like
"No," Elias said as the elevator doors closed. "She thinks she’s walking into a four-million-dollar buyout meeting at Meridian’s headquarters at sunrise. And we’re going to be there to hand her the pen."
***
