"You Serve the Wine," His Fiancée Said—Then the Family Attorney Pulled Out My Chair | Part 1

Julian raised his weapon, aiming directly at Adrian's chest. "Step away, Elena. Or your half-brother dies before he can blink."

Elena's hands hovered over the keyboard. She looked at Julian, then at the Execute Sunspot prompt pulsing on the screen. If she hit it, the Kensingtons would lose billions. But Adrian would be dead.

"You don't want to shoot him, Julian," Elena said, her voice betraying none of her internal panic. "If you kill a Vale heir, the board will freeze all assets. You'll inherit a locked vault."

"I have the board in my pocket," Julian sneered. "Now, load the algorithm onto this drive." He tossed a titanium USB drive onto the floor near the glass enclosure.

Elena slowly bent down, picking up the drive. She plugged it into the terminal. Her fingers moved rapidly across the keyboard.

"Done," Elena said, pulling the drive out.

"Slide it over," Julian commanded.

Elena slid the titanium drive across the slick floor. Julian’s enforcer picked it up and handed it to him. Julian smiled, a terrifying, victorious smirk.

"You're smarter than your father, Elena. You chose life." Julian turned to his men. "Wire the servers with C4. Destroy the original servers. We leave no trace."

"Wait!" Adrian shouted. "You have the drive! You said you'd let us go!"

"I said you were out of time," Julian replied coldly. "I'm not leaving the two of you alive to rebuild it."

Julian raised his gun.

BZZZZT!

The massive server farm was plunged into absolute, pitch-black darkness. The hum of the servers died instantly. The emergency hydroelectric power had been severed.

"What the hell?" Julian shouted in the dark. "Turn on your tactical lights!"

In the fraction of a second before the blinding white lights of the enforcers' rifles clicked on, Elena grabbed Adrian’s arm and yanked him hard to the floor, rolling them beneath the raised metal floorboards of the server racks.

Gunfire erupted, shattering the glass enclosure where they had been standing seconds before.

"Find them!" Julian roared.

Under the floorboards, crawling through the freezing, dust-choked ventilation space, Adrian was hyperventilating. "How did the power cut?" he whispered frantically.

"I didn't transfer the algorithm to his drive," Elena whispered back, her eyes cold and calculating in the dark. "I transferred a massive logic bomb. The moment he plugged it into his receiver, it triggered a complete facility blackout and locked the blast doors. They are trapped in here."

"And so are we!"

"There's an emergency maintenance hatch," Elena said, crawling faster. "My father's blueprints. Keep moving."

Ten minutes later, they emerged onto the muddy banks of the East River, gasping for the freezing night air. Behind them, deep underground, Julian Kensington was locked in a steel tomb. He wouldn't die—his men had explosives to blow the doors eventually—but it bought Elena exactly what she needed: Time.

"We have the algorithm," Adrian coughed, collapsing onto the mud. "But Julian is going to come for us with everything he has."

"I know," Elena said, staring out at the dark water. "Which is why we need to know exactly how the Kensingtons operate. We need to know their weaknesses. And there is only one person alive who has done business with them for over a decade."

Adrian looked up, horrified. "No. Elena, you can't be serious."

An hour later, Elena sat in a sterile, concrete interrogation room at the Federal Detention Center in lower Manhattan.

The heavy metal door clanked open. Victoria Vale, stripped of her designer gowns and forced into an orange jumpsuit, was escorted into the room. She looked haggard, her hair unkempt, but her eyes burned with the same toxic, aristocratic pride.

"Come to gloat?" Victoria sneered, sitting across the metal table.

"I came to make a deal," Elena said flatly. "Julian Kensington tried to kill us tonight. He wants Project Icarus. I need to know how to destroy his family."

Victoria let out a harsh, barking laugh. "You arrogant little girl. You can't destroy the Kensingtons. They own the judges, the police, the politicians. They will crush you like an insect."

"If they crush me, they take Vale Holdings," Elena leaned forward. "Which means your shares—your precious legacy—become worthless. You will rot in this cell for the rest of your life as a pauper."

Victoria’s laughter died. She stared at Elena, realizing the truth of her words.

"I can have you transferred to luxury house arrest at the Hamptons estate," Elena offered. "I control the board, which means I control the corporate lawyers funding your defense. Give me Julian's weakness, or I cut your legal funding tomorrow morning."

Victoria clenched her jaw. She looked at the bastard daughter who had dethroned her, recognizing a ruthlessness that mirrored her own.

"Julian has no weaknesses," Victoria whispered. "But the Syndicate does. There is a mole inside your inner circle, Elena. Someone who has been feeding the Kensingtons information since the day your father died. Someone you trust."