Chapter 10 – THE WALL BEHIND THE MURAL

Delilah raised the iron crowbar and smashed it into the beautifully painted mural of a forest canopy.

Plaster exploded. Lucy flinched in her hospital bed, gripping the sheets. Catherine let out a gasp of horror, her phone halfway to her ear.

“Delilah, stop!” Lucy shouted at the screen, even though she knew it was a one-way feed.

On the screen, Delilah swung again, tearing a massive hole in the drywall. Dust filled the pristine nursery. She dropped the crowbar and reached her gloved hands into the dark cavity between the studs.

When she pulled her hands out, she was holding a heavy, black steel lockbox.

Lucy’s breath caught in her throat.

“You thought you were auditing James,” Delilah said to the camera, resting the lockbox on the edge of the crib. “But my employers were auditing you, Lucy. Apex Innovations might be a shell company you own, but you don’t own the servers they run on. A rival firm does. And they knew your father hid the original source code for the Aether algorithm offline.”

Delilah patted the lockbox.

“Where better to hide the master key to a billion-dollar tech empire than inside the walls of your unborn child’s nursery? The one room James told me you never allowed the corporate security team to sweep.”

Catherine finally got through to Marcus. “Marcus! The townhouse is breached! The girl is in the nursery with the lockbox!”

“We’re already moving, Mother,” Marcus’s voice crackled coldly over the phone. “My team is two minutes out.”

On the screen, Delilah checked her watch. She knew the response time. She knew she had to move fast.

She turned back to the camera, holding the heavy black box.

“I’m leaving now, Lucy,” Delilah sneered. “James was an idiot, but he was a useful idiot. He gave me the floor plans. He gave me the security blind spots. Enjoy your hollow victory.”

Delilah turned toward the nursery door.

But as she reached for the handle, the door swung open.

Standing in the doorway was a woman in a sharp grey suit. It was Sandra Blaine.

But Sandra wasn’t holding legal documents. She was holding a silenced pistol, pointed directly at Delilah’s chest.

Lucy stared at the screen in absolute shock. “Sandra? What is she doing there? She just left my room five minutes ago!”

“No, she didn’t,” Catherine said quietly, lowering her phone.

Lucy looked at her mother. Catherine’s face was perfectly calm, devoid of the panic she had shown just moments before.

On the screen, Sandra didn’t yell. She didn’t read Delilah her rights. She simply held out her free hand.

Delilah, terrified, slowly handed over the black lockbox.

“Good girl,” Sandra said on the feed.

Then, Sandra did something impossible. She turned the lockbox over, pressed a hidden latch, and popped the bottom off.

The box was completely empty.

Sandra looked up at the camera, gave a small, respectful nod, and then stepped aside, allowing two massive Thorne security operatives to enter the room and zip-tie Delilah’s wrists.

The television screen clicked off.

The hospital room was silent. Lucy slowly turned to her mother.

“Mom,” Lucy breathed. “What just happened?”

Catherine sat back down in the chair beside the bed and elegantly crossed her legs. She reached into her designer handbag and pulled out a small, metallic flash drive.

“Your father was a brilliant man, Lucille,” Catherine said softly. “But he was deeply paranoid. He never trusted you to hold the master code. And he certainly never trusted your husband.”

TITLE: THE QUEEN’S GAMBIT

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