Chapter 7 — I Opened My Own Grave

The screen went dark beneath my hand.

Thomas leaned forward, the pistol still pointed toward Sophia.

“What did you do?”

A progress bar appeared.

Ten percent. Thirty. Sixty.

He watched it climb, breathing through his mouth. Across the aisle, Camila took a step toward the terminal before her guard stopped her.

The bar reached the end.

CROWN PROTOCOL ACCEPTED.

Thomas smiled.

Then a second message appeared.

ARCHIVE RELEASE CONFIRMED.

His smile faded.

“Where’s the transfer screen?”

I lifted my hand from the reader.

“There isn’t one.”

The terminal began displaying a list of delivery confirmations. Outside counsel. Evidence custodians. Investigative offices in cities my father had visited under names his own children never knew.

Thomas lowered the gun a fraction.

“Open the account interface.”

“You’ve already opened Crown.”

He seized the front of my shirt and pulled me toward him.

“I found the holdings. The balances. The reserve structure. Don’t tell me it isn’t there.”

“The money is there. It isn’t what this protocol releases.”

Damian pushed away from his crate.

“Matteo.”

I recognized the fear in his voice. He had worked beside me long enough to understand the names beginning to scroll across the screen.

One of them was his.

“Your payroll records are in it,” I told him. “The second set. The one you thought I never saw.”

He looked at Thomas.

“Shut it down.”

Thomas released my shirt and reached for the keyboard.

The keys did nothing.

“There’s no cancel command,” I said.

He drew back and struck the screen with the pistol butt. Glass cracked across the delivery list.

The next confirmation appeared beneath the fracture.

Lily caught my sleeve.

“What are you sending?”

“Records. Payments. Conversations. The things Father kept because he thought knowing everyone’s secrets would keep us safe.”

“And things you kept,” Sophia said.

She had moved closer to her concrete support. Her eyes met mine across Thomas’s shoulder.

“Yes.”

Her gaze returned to the names on the screen.

“Your shipping companies?”

“Yes.”

Thomas hit the keyboard again.

“Does it include what you did?” Sophia asked.

I could have pretended not to hear her over the phones.

“The payments I approved. The cargo I knew about. People I paid to look away.”

Lily turned toward me.

“All of it?”

“Everything I could document.”

Sophia looked at the terminal, then back at me.

“You could have sent it before tonight.”

“I could have.”

Her expression did not soften. I was grateful she hadn’t mistaken this for an apology.

“Then if we get out of here,” she said, “you tell them the truth.”

“I will.”

She held my gaze until I understood that she would remember the promise.

“Where are the files stored?” Thomas demanded.

“Not here.”

“Then disconnect it.”

He snapped his fingers at the guard beside the cabinet. The man pulled open the lower service panel and tore out a cable.

The screen lost its connection indicator.

It was already too late.

“This terminal sent authorization,” I said. “The releases happened somewhere else.”

Camila’s phone began ringing.

She took it out slowly. The guard beside her allowed it, watching her hands.

“Answer,” Thomas ordered.

She did.

I could not hear the voice at the other end, but I saw the change in her face.

“What do you mean, suspended?”

She listened.

“No. He’s dead. You’re supposed to—”

Her eyes found mine.

I said nothing.

Damian’s phone vibrated next. Then a device on a crate beside the office. A guard checked his own screen and swore.

My private administrators had received the instruction to suspend discretionary access. The archive recipients had received something much more dangerous.

The banks and the authorities would make their own decisions. I had given them enough to begin.

Thomas stared at the disconnected terminal.

“You built a trap.”

“I built a way to end it.”

“After you’d spent years taking everything you wanted.”

That accusation deserved an answer.

“Yes.”

Lily let go of my sleeve.

“You knew this existed, and you never told me?”

“I knew what it could do. I didn’t know tonight would happen.”

“You needed me to open it.”

“I needed you here and alive.”

“So did he.”

I looked at her.

There was no useful way to soften the similarity.

“You’re right,” I said.

Thomas laughed once.

“Listen to him. Still deciding what you’re allowed to know.”

Lily turned toward him.

“You don’t get to help me be angry with my brother.”

Her voice held steady this time.

“I can do that myself.”

Thomas raised his pistol again.

The nearest guard stepped sideways to clear his aim. I moved Lily behind the cabinet’s open steel door.

“You kill me,” I said, “and the files still arrive.”

“Then tell me how to withdraw them.”

“I can’t.”

Sophia’s guard checked the office door, distracted by the ringing device inside. She edged around the support, putting concrete between her body and Thomas’s muzzle.

He saw her move.

“Stay where I can see you, Soph.”

“You’ve seen enough of me tonight.”

Damian spoke from behind his guard.

“Thomas, listen. We need to leave. There are people in those records who will send men here before the police do.”

Thomas reached for a wall control beside the cabinet and pressed it.

Across the warehouse, the main door locks engaged with a heavy clack.

He had decided that none of us would leave before he recovered what he had lost.

“You’re going to fix this,” he told me.

I glanced toward the manual fire-release handle beside the nearest loading door. A guard stood between it and us.

I needed a distraction. A dropped weapon. A few feet of clear floor.

Something would have to break first.

“There’s an emergency alert in the release package,” I said. “This terminal’s location. Both heirs under threat.”

Thomas’s hand tightened around the gun.

“You called the police.”

“I gave them a reason to come.”

“They’ll arrest you too.”

“I know.”

He looked at Sophia, expecting that admission to change something.

She kept her eyes on him.

“Put the gun down, Thomas.”

“You think he’s better than me now?”

“I think you still have a choice.”

For a moment, I thought he might listen. His mouth moved, but no words came out. He stared at his sister as if she had asked him to step off a cliff.

Then the broken terminal emitted a small confirmation tone.

Thomas turned and fired into it.

I dragged Lily down behind the steel door as sparks burst across the cabinet.