“If the Prater message is fabricated,” he said, not to her specifically, to the room, “They have someone with access to our communication channels. Not just routes and facility locations, active comms.” “Marcus,” Sergei said, lowering his phone. “Marcus gave them channel access?” “He gave them the encryption keys for the secondary relay.
He said it was just routing information.” Sergei’s voice was flat and specific and contained no editorial content. He didn’t understand what the keys could do. Ronan put both hands on the desk, pressed down, said nothing for a moment. Violetta watched the muscles in his jaw work. “They’ve been in our communications,” he said, “since at least 3 weeks ago, possibly longer.
” “Which means every move we’ve discussed in this building since she arrived?” He stopped. “They know,” Sergei said. The room was very quiet. Dr. Yuan appeared in the doorway. The man had brought her quickly and she arrived looking like someone who had been carrying a specific weight for a very long time and had just set it down and wasn’t sure what her posture was supposed to be without it.
She looked at Ronan. She didn’t apologize. She said, “What do you need to know?” “Everything Marsh told you,” Ronan said. “Start from the beginning. Fast.” She started. It took 11 minutes. By the end of it, Sergei had filled two two sections of the wall. The picture was complete now in a way it hadn’t been at 6:00 in the morning.
Celeste Vey had not merely orchestrated the financial fraud and the poisoning. She had built a parallel intelligence operation around Ronan’s organization for the specific purpose of using it as leverage. The exposure she’d offered Marcus wasn’t incidental. It was the product of months of deliberate infiltration, mapping the organization’s vulnerabilities with the patience of someone who planned to use those vulnerabilities not immediately, but exactly when needed.
When Violetta survived the road, that was the trigger. The contingency Violetta had identified. If the poison failed, if Violetta lived past delivery and the trust activated and she had any ability to fight back, the exposure of Ronan’s operation was the weapon designed to neutralize the one resource Violetta had accidentally acquired, his protection.
“She’s not trying to get me back.” Violetta said. She was standing near the wall, looking at the names, the lines, the architecture of it. “The 12-hour ultimatum. Returning me isn’t the point. The point is to get the convoy moving on a route they control.” “Eliminate the threat in transit.” Ronan said. “And if federal agents find the wreckage of one of my convoys with a dead pregnant woman inside, it becomes your problem, not hers.
” Violetta looked at him. “She eliminates me, destroys your operation and walks away with Hale Biotech and the trust fund because there’s no one left to contest the estate.” She paused. “She’s not just cleaning up. She’s burning everything down and watching from a safe distance.” Ronan straightened. “Where’s Vey right now?” Sergei checked his phone.
“Last confirmed location was the Hale Biotech Tower. Board meeting this morning. Emergency session about the CEO transition.” “She called a board meeting?” “She’s moving on the company while she moves on you.” Violetta said. “She’s doing both simultaneously.” She felt something cold and clarifying move through her. Not calm, exactly.
Something harder than calm. “She’s very good. She’s about to have a bad afternoon.” Ronan said. He turned to Sergey. “Real Prater, find him. Not the message, the actual man. Put everyone we have on it. Gary, the surrounding area, any safe house network he might have accessed.” He moved to the desk and picked up his phone.
“And get me Holloway’s location. Personal phone, vehicle, building access logs, everything.” “Grant is at the Holloway Capital offices.” Yun said quietly. Everyone turned. She hadn’t spoken since finishing her account. “He called me this morning. He said he needed a medical update on Violetta. I told him I hadn’t seen her.
” She looked at Violetta. “He didn’t believe me. He was very controlled about it. The way he gets when he’s already decided something and is just confirming. He knows she’s here.” Ronan said. “He suspects. He’s not certain. He will be soon.” Ronan looked at Violetta. “We need to move you, but not in a convoy and not on any route that went through our communication system in the past 3 weeks.
Where?” “There’s a location that’s never been in any digital record. No file, no briefing, no communication. I bought it in cash through four layers of shell 12 years ago and I’ve used it twice. Sergey knows it. Nobody else in this organization does.” He held her gaze. “You’d be secure there. And then what?” “Then we find Prater for real and we find a way to get him in front of a federal attorney without moving through any channel Vay can monitor.
” She looked at him. “You have a federal contact?” A pause. “I have someone who owes me a significant debt and who has the authority to convene an emergency grand jury session with sufficient evidence.” He said it with the careful specificity of a man disclosing something he doesn’t disclose. It’s not a clean relationship, but it’s real.
Use it, she said. I intend to. He turned. Sergei. The explosion was not large. It was precise. The east wing’s external wall, the section facing the rear property, 15 ft from where they were standing, absorbed a shaped charge detonation that blew the window inward in a single violent exhalation of glass and frame and cold air.
The sound was enormous and immediate and physical, the kind of concussive force you feel in your sternum before you hear it with your ears. Violetta was thrown sideways by the pressure. She hit the desk with her shoulder and went down, and her hands went to her stomach instinctively, and she was on the floor with glass in her hair before she fully understood what had happened.
