Chapter 10 - The Midnight Raid
At 11:00 PM, I drove back to the Whitmore family estate in Wellesley.
The grand house was quiet. My uncle Richard had retired to his second-floor quarters, leaving only the night security guards patrolling the perimeter grounds.
Using my master key card as corporate CEO, I unlocked the private sub-basement archive room beneath the east wing—a room where sixty years of Whitmore family documents were stored in heavy steel fireproof safes.
The room smelled of old paper, leather, and ozone.
I walked straight to the primary server rack in the corner, pulled out my encrypted drive, and plugged it into the administrative terminal.
The terminal screen flickered to life, requesting biometric authorization. I scanned my palm print. As CEO, my clearance opened every vault in the system.
DECRYPTION IN PROGRESS... 12%... 45%... 88%... COMPLETE.
A list of twenty thousand confidential internal emails spilled across the monitor—including the direct email thread between Richard and Arthur Vance sent three hours after the Plant 4 explosion.
Subject: Keane Protocol. Text: Ensure the technician's private logs are seized from his residence immediately. Vance will draft the non-disclosure agreement. Payout capped at 200k via Aegis. The official report remains worker negligence.
My hands trembled with fury as I hit the transfer button, copying every file onto my portable drive.
"You always were too sentimental for this family, Adrian."
May you like
I froze.
I turned around slowly. Richard was standing in the doorway of the archive room, holding a small silver revolver in his right hand. Beside him stood Frank Miller.
