Chapter 6 - THE ARCHIVE OF SHADOWS
An hour after the grand ballroom was evacuated and sealed by law enforcement, Marissa sat in the dimly lit interior of a black sedan parked three blocks away from the venue. Lily was asleep in the backseat, wrapped in a warm wool blanket, exhausted from the trauma of the evening.
In the front passenger seat sat Julian, a man in his late thirties with sharp features and a dark suit, holding an open encrypted laptop on his knees.
"The video broadcast went off without a hitch," Julian said, his fingers dancing across the keyboard. "Every major news network in the city has acquired the feed. By tomorrow morning, the Vance family stock will drop by at least thirty percent."
"Good," Marissa murmured, looking out the tinted window at the rain starting to slick the city streets. "Let it burn."
"Gareth's legal team is already trying to claim the surveillance footage was tampered with," Julian noted, leaning back. "They're going to push a narrative that you orchestrated a cyber attack on the hall's AV network."
Marissa turned her head, her expression unreadable. "Let them try. The original files aren't on the venue's local server. They're stored on an offshore cloud array with immutable timestamps. Every frame of him placing that watch in Lily's bag is verified by cryptographic hashes."
Julian sighed, closing the laptop screen halfway. "You played a dangerous game today, Marissa. If he had hit her any harder..."
"He was never going to hurt her more than he needed to pull off his play," Marissa interrupted, her voice tightening with suppressed rage. "Gareth is a coward. He uses violence only when he thinks no one is looking, and only when he feels entirely in control. He wanted to frame Lily to strip me of my guardianship rights before the board meeting next week."
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"Because under your father's trust, if you are deemed unfit due to a criminal investigation involving your household, your voting shares automatically transfer to Gareth," Julian summarized, nodding slowly. "He was desperate."
"Desperate enough to ruin a child," Marissa said softly. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small, old-fashioned silver key—the key to her late father's private vault at the downtown central bank. "He thought he was playing for the family fortune. He has no idea what Father actually left behind."
