Jake stared at the blank flight tracking screen.No plan filed. Small aircraft. Departed a private New Jersey airfield thirty minutes ago. Rothschild was somewhere in the air with no destination on record and a three-hour head start."How small was the aircraft?" Jake asked."Cessna Citation. Range roughly three thousand miles without refueling. That gets him to Canada, Caribbean, parts of South America, or most of Western Europe depending on direction.""He's not going somewhere new. He's going somewhere he already controls. Existing assets. Existing protection."Derek pulled up his laptop. "Rothschild family holdings. Primary residences: London, New York, Geneva. Commercial properties across nine countries. But the family seat is Switzerland. Canton of Vaud. Private estate that's been in the family for over a century.""Switzerland.""If he has anywhere that feels like a fortress, that's it. Old money. Local relationships going back generations. Staff who've worked the property for

Jake spent three hours at Swiss Federal Police headquarters that afternoon.The interview was methodical. Swiss precision applied to financial investigation. Two officers. A prosecutor from the federal attorney's office. A FINMA representative sitting in without speaking.They asked about the deepfake commission. The payment chain. How Jake had identified the Cayman entity's connection to Rothschild. He answered everything directly, provided his documentation in organized folders his legal team had prepared, and said nothing beyond what was asked.Professional courtesy throughout. No accusation toward Jake. No suggestion he was anything other than a witness whose situation had generated evidence useful to a broader inquiry that had been building for longer than anyone had publicly acknowledged.That last part came out gradually through the questions. The German tax inquiry that had triggered the bank's internal compliance review wasn't coincidental to Rothschild's situation. The bank

Jake looked at the drawing for a long time.The thick brown line. Emma on one side with Sophia. Stick figure daddy on the other side. His office. A wall she'd drawn herself because she'd observed it was real."I'm sorry, baby," he said.She'd already picked up a green crayon and moved on to coloring grass. Three-year-old attention spans didn't sustain grievance. But that didn't mean the observation was wrong. Children moved on quickly. The pattern they were describing didn't move on. It accumulated.He helped her color the grass until Sophia called them for dinner. Normal evening. Normal family. Except Jake barely tasted the food.After Emma was in bed, he stood in her doorway watching her sleep. The stuffed elephant. The dragon drawing taped to the wall. The nightlight casting soft orange across the ceiling.He'd fought wars to keep her safe. Paid billions. Survived assassination attempts. Rebuilt compound twice. All of it for her. For this.And she drew a picture where he was on the

Jake sat with the confirmation screen for a long time.YES / NO.Six years. The System had been there from the beginning. The first notification finding him in a parking lot after Elena told him she wanted a divorce. A delivery driver with nothing but a phone that suddenly showed him a different path.He thought about that version of himself. The humiliation of that day. Standing outside a building he'd just been dismissed from, watching his marriage end in a parking lot conversation, feeling like the world had correctly assessed his value and found it insufficient.The System had arrived then. Not accidentally. Not randomly. Something had chosen that moment.He'd never fully understood why. Never gotten a clear answer when he'd tried to think about it. Just accepted it the way you accept things that work. It worked, so he used it. Simple.Now it was asking him to end it.He got up from the desk. Walked to the kitchen. Filled a glass of water and stood at the counter in the dark, look

Jake looked at the photograph for a long moment.The figure was entering a building in Manhattan on Thursday night. The build was right. The height was right. The clothing was generic enough to fit any number of men. The face was partially turned from the camera but the angle showed enough.Enough to make a witness believe it was Jake Morrison."That's not me," Jake said."You're certain you were here Thursday evening.""Completely certain. I haven't been to Manhattan in three weeks. My wife can confirm. Our housekeeper was here until eight PM. Security system logs the property. Cameras at the access road will show my vehicle didn't leave."Detective Reyes was writing now too. Both of them noting the specificity. The prepared quality of his answer.Hargrove put the phone away. "We'd appreciate access to those security logs.""My lawyer will arrange it today." Jake pulled out his phone. Called Steinberg's office. Left a message for the first available attorney with two sentences about