Chapter 5 - The Chairman's Ledger
Julian Mercer looked exactly like Daniel's late father—tall, impeccably groomed, with a silver mustache and eyes that had spent sixty years calculating the exact price of loyalty. He didn't look like a man who trafficked in illegal cargo; he looked like a statesman who had just left a charitable gala.
"You always were too diligent for your own good, Daniel," Julian said, his voice echoing off the concrete walls of the archive room. "Your father knew it, too. He told me before he died that if we didn't keep you focused on the quarterly profits, you’d start looking at the floorboards."
Daniel stepped in front of Noah, his large frame completely obscuring the boy from view. "You used Sarah Vance to cover your tracks twenty years ago. You framed her, chased her out of the city, and when she finally came back because she couldn't afford to keep her children alive, you hunted her down again."
"Sarah was an idealist," Julian said, taking a slow step forward, his leather shoes clicking against the concrete. "She thought a multi-billion-dollar logistics firm could be built on clean receipts. She didn't understand that the ports don't run on grease, Daniel. They run on concessions."
"Where is she, Julian?" Daniel’s voice dropped into a register that made his uncle’s guards shift their weight. "Where is Sarah Vance?"
Julian sighed, a dry, dismissive sound. "She’s at the old terminal warehouse near pier four. Safe, for now. She’s been very stubborn about giving up the original encryption keys for the Cerberus accounts. She hid them well—apparently inside a piece of junk her son was supposed to destroy."
Noah pulled at Daniel's trousers from behind, his small voice a tiny, sharp needle in the tense silence. "The pocket book. It’s in his coat."
Julian’s eyes snapped down to the space behind Daniel's legs. A cruel smile touched his lips. "Ah. The boy. Arthur always said the Vance blood was resilient. To think he survived twelve days in that factory with a dying infant."
"If you touch either of these children, Julian," Daniel said, his fingers curling into fists so tight the skin over his knuckles split, "there won't be enough lawyers in Washington to keep you out of a federal cage. I’ve already uploaded the sub-level manifests to the regional director of the FBI."
Julian didn't flinch. He simply pulled a silver smartphone from his pocket and pressed a single button.
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On the archive monitors behind Daniel, the live security feed for the Harbor County Medical Center pediatric ICU flashed onto the screen. A man in a white lab coat was standing directly outside Lily’s isolation room, his hand resting on the manual oxygen shut-off valve for the sector.
"The FBI takes approximately forty-five minutes to process an emergency intervention, Daniel," Julian said softly. "The baby has approximately ninety seconds if that valve is turned. Let’s not do anything that ruins a nice November morning."
