Chapter 23 - THE TRAITOR IN THE BOARDROOM
Daniel divided the team. Rachel escorted vulnerable employees outside while Thomas and Simon searched the ventilation levels. Anna, Mark, and I remained with Victor as the board members argued over evacuation.
One director, Charles Dane, insisted the alarm was Anna’s attempt to disrupt the vote. Victor recognized the phrasing from Lydia’s leaked statement. Daniel checked Dane’s access records and found he had entered the ventilation floor minutes before our arrival.
Dane drew a pistol.
Mark pushed Anna beneath the conference table as Dane fired. The bullet struck the wall beside Victor. Security tackled Dane, but he bit down on a capsule hidden in his tooth and collapsed before he could be questioned.
Inside his briefcase, Daniel found forged share certificates and a photograph of Dane with Lydia, Vale, and Eleanor taken twenty-five years earlier. Miriam identified him as the executive who processed the first Westbridge payments.
The countdown reached eleven minutes.
Thomas radioed that the transmitter was protected by a biometric lock requiring Anna’s handprint. Lydia had designed the system so only her intended victim could disable it. Anna headed toward the ventilation floor despite our protests.
At the locked chamber, she placed her palm against the scanner. The door opened, but the countdown accelerated.
Inside stood rows of silver canisters and a control console. The transmitter sat in the center. A video of Lydia appeared.
“You were always more resistant than predicted,” she told Anna. “That is why your father chose you.”
Anna froze. “My father chose me for what?”
Lydia smiled. “James did not hide Project Lantern. He completed it.”
Then the chamber door sealed behind Anna, separating her from all of us.
Away from the shouting, the emotional cost of the revelation finally became visible. The events surrounding the traitor in the boardroom could no longer be dismissed as one family quarrel. Anna asked Daniel to create three separate copies of every new record and place them with people outside Victor's company. She had learned that a single locked phone, altered document, or frightened witness could erase months of truth. Daniel agreed, but warned her that the conspiracy appeared to anticipate ordinary police procedure. From that point forward, every call would be verified face-to-face, every sample would receive two independent tests, and no one would travel alone.
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For Anna, fear had trained her to become invisible, yet every detail she remembered now became a weapon against the people who had silenced her. For Victor, authority could open doors, but it could not repair the years in which powerful people had chosen convenience over truth. For Mark, regret was not innocence, and every attempt to explain himself forced him to confront another choice he had made willingly. I watched these changes unfold with a mixture of pride and guilt. My instinct was still to take Anna home, lock the door, and stand between her and every danger. Yet the woman beside me was no longer asking to be hidden. She wanted names, dates, motives, and proof. She wanted to understand why her kindness had been mistaken for weakness and why the people closest to her believed fear would keep her obedient forever. When I apologized for not seeing the truth sooner, she squeezed my hand and told me the shame belonged to those who had created the fear, not to those deceived by it.
Daniel then reconstructed the latest movements on a paper timeline instead of a networked screen. A small inconsistency emerged: someone had acted before information should have been available. That meant the enemy was not merely watching from outside. Either a person in the group was still reporting every decision, or one of the devices believed to be secure remained compromised. Victor ordered a search, but Anna stopped him from announcing it. If a hidden observer believed the deception still worked, they could feed that observer carefully chosen information and follow the response.
