The story isn't over yet—continue with the next chapter.

-5-

The digital clock on the motel microwave glowed 3:15 AM as I loaded Lily carefully into the back seat of the sedan, making sure her seatbelt was clicked securely and her head was propped comfortably against her travel pillow. She stirred for a moment, murmuring something unintelligible about her red dress before sinking back into a deep, dreamless sleep.

I climbed back behind the wheel, my fingers gripping the steering wheel so tightly my knuckles turned ivory white in the dashboard’s faint illumination.

Before starting the engine, I pulled out my phone. It was still powered off. I pressed and held the side button until the Apple logo blinked to life, followed immediately by an avalanche of cascading notifications.

Thirty-four missed calls. Forty-two unread text messages.

My thumb flicked through them with cold detachment. Most of them were from Mark, his panic escalating from pleading corporate lawyer to frantic, unhinged brother: Claire, where the hell are you? The board is in total revolt. Dad suffered a mild angina attack ten minutes ago. The feds are already executing a search warrant at the corporate headquarters. Please, for God's sake, call us back.

Then there was a message from an unknown, encrypted number, containing only a single sentence: You have files that don't belong to you, Mrs. Vance. Return them to the estate before sunrise, or the search won't stop at your apartment.

I didn't reply. I didn't even hesitate. I opened my phone’s settings, removed the SIM card entirely, and tossed the tiny plastic chip out the window into the wet, freezing gravel of the parking lot.

They wanted a war? I was going to give them an extinction-level event.

I put the car in drive and pulled out onto the empty highway, heading due north toward the high desert of Nevada—toward the coordinates buried deep within the Project Vanguard database. The files indicated that Vance Global’s primary secondary archive—and potentially the answer to what really happened to David—was housed inside an abandoned municipal water facility converted into a secure subterranean server node near the ghost town of Tonopah.

It was a four-hour drive through freezing mountain passes and desolate stretches of highway where cell service was non-existent and the night belonged to the elements. But as the miles ticked away beneath my tires, the exhaustion that had weighed heavy on my shoulders all evening began to evaporate, replaced by a cold, sharp, unshakeable adrenaline.

For five years, I had believed I was a failure. I had believed the cruel whispers of my mother, the condescending smirks of my brother, and the icy indifference of my father. I had walked through life feeling like a secondary character in their grand, wealthy drama—someone to be tolerated, pitied, and dismissed.

Now, as the dark silhouette of the Sierra Nevada mountains loomed ahead against the starless pre-dawn sky, I finally understood the truth.