CHAPTER 6 — The Billion-Dollar Trap
Panic spread through Blackwood Holdings.
Stock prices collapsed before markets even opened.
News channels called it the biggest corporate cyberattack in American history.
Employees fled the headquarters carrying boxes.
Investors demanded answers.
But Adrian had expected all of it.
Another envelope, scheduled months earlier, arrived at Detective Monroe's office.
Inside was a single encrypted flash drive and a handwritten note.
"Trust no one wearing the Blackwood name."
The drive contained one final surprise.
A hidden surveillance recording from thirty years earlier.
The grainy footage showed Saint Margaret Hospital on the night the babies were born.
A nurse carried two infants into a storage room.
Victor Hale followed.
Money changed hands.
Then...
Another man entered the room.
Richard Blackwood.
The patriarch himself.
Monroe watched in disbelief.
Richard hadn't been a victim of the conspiracy.
He had created it.
He ordered the babies exchanged to hide an affair, secure the family fortune, and eliminate his younger brother's bloodline forever.
The dynasty had been built on a lie.
Before anyone could process the revelation, alarms erupted throughout the police headquarters.
Someone had breached the evidence room.
Officers rushed inside.
The flash drive...
Gone.
Only one object remained on the empty evidence table.
Adrian's wedding ring.
The same ring Sophia had secretly taken from the cliff.
Attached to it was a handwritten note.
"You're still looking in the wrong direction."
Rachel slowly turned toward the security monitor.
A new live broadcast had begun.
Adrian stood inside what looked like an abandoned church.
Behind him stood a shadowed figure holding a pistol.
The figure stepped forward.
Everyone gasped.
It wasn't Victor Hale.
It wasn't Richard Blackwood.
It wasn't Sophia.
It was Detective Rachel Monroe's own father—former Police Commissioner Thomas Monroe, the man celebrated for exposing corruption decades earlier.
Adrian looked into the camera and said quietly,
"You've been chasing the wrong monster."
"The man who stole my family... has been protecting himself with a badge for thirty years."
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The transmission ended.
And for the first time, Detective Rachel Monroe realized the investigation had become deeply personal.
