Marcel stared at the four names on his screen, his thumb lingering over Olivia’s."It's an obvious setup, Marcel," Marcus insisted, shoving his hands into his jacket pockets as they stood in the alley near the SUV. "You walk in alone, they drop a net on you, and it’s over. I’m tailing you.""They asked for one person, Marcus," Marcel said, his voice quiet, guarded. "If they spot your van, they execute the floor.""I'm not asking for permission," Marcus snapped, stepping closer and pretending to adjust Marcel's collar. His fingers deftly slipped a micro-tracker into the lining of the lapel. "I'll stay three blocks back. I won't move in unless the signal flatlines or you broadcast a hard distress. Pretend I'm not there."Before Marcel could reply, his phone buzzed with a low-priority system alert. It was a encrypted ping rerouted through Marcus's hacked server framework, originating from Eleanor's old relay frequency.*Don't trust the first man who calls himself your father.*Marcel sta

"It's a digital edit," Marcel said, his voice flat as he held the glowing phone screen toward the tunnel's dim wall light. "It has to be.""It isn't," Adrian said, resting his palm against the cold concrete to steady himself. "Daniel Vale was your father's head investigator. We buried an empty casket for him twenty years ago after the fire at the harbor."Marcel turned toward Marcus, who was leaning heavily against Olivia's shoulder, his eyes unfocused, his skin slick with cold sweat. "Marcus, look at this."Marcus blinked slowly, taking the phone with trembling fingers. He stared at the face in the photograph for five seconds before his chest hitched. "That's... that's my dad. But his hair... he didn't have that scar near his ear in the framed photo on my desk.""Because the records you were given were cleaned," Adrian said quietly. "Daniel didn't die in that fire, Marcus. He realized Cain's group had compromised our inner circle, so he

"Marcel, the countdown timer is running on the network!" Marcus yelled, his fingers trembling over his tablet screen. "You have thirty seconds to select a corridor!""Every single time my life fell apart," Marcel said, his voice dropping into a dangerous, icy register, "someone stood in front of me and insisted I only had two choices. Option A or Option B. Pay the debt or lose the house. Save Olivia or lose the garage. I am done playing their game.""Marcel, they're your parents!" Lily begged, pulling on his sleeve."And they've been using binary traps to keep us moving for twenty years," Marcel said, looking down at her. "Lily, think about it. When does the interface pop up on my screen? It doesn't appear when we're sitting in a quiet room planning. It shows up when I'm bleeding, when you're threatened, when I'm terrified. It isn't predicting my moves. It's forcing me into panic so I take the option it prepared."Lily blinked, her breat

"Speak," Marcel said, his voice dropping into a harsh register that made Lily flinch. "No more code names. No more half-truths. Who did you build it for?"Eleanor wiped a tear from her cheek, her hands shaking as she pulled her coat tight around her chest. "I didn't build it for Cain, Marcel. And I didn't build it for the council." She looked up, meeting his eyes for the first time since the doors locked. "I built the original model for your father."Richard took a step back, his brow furrowing. "Evelyn, what are you talking about?""You wanted to know who in our network was vulnerable to bribery," Eleanor said, her voice turning sharp as she turned toward her husband. "You asked me to create a tool to predict which executives would break under financial strain so we could shield them before criminals bought them off! But I saw what the mathematics could do. I realized we could predict human choices before they were made.""You built an engine," Marcel said, stepping directly into her

"That's my name on the depositor line," Marcel said, his voice terrifyingly quiet. "How is my name on a forty-million-dollar wire?"Richard Kane stared at the terminal screen, his hands trembling as he traced the raw routing numbers. "I know that ledger series. It was part of a secret contingency plan I set up twenty years ago. But I never deposited a single dollar into it, Marcel. I swear to you.""The money didn't come from your father, Marcel," Marcus said, tapping his keys as code cascaded across his tablet. "I traced the earliest deposits back to 2008. They came from small, legitimate logistics firms. Firms that were quietly bought up years later by Vanguard Capital."Marcel turned toward his father, his eyes cold and unblinking. "This money was sitting there while I was sleeping in my car? While Lily was missing treatments? It was sitting there the night I walked onto that roof?""Yes," Richard whispered, looking at the floor.