Chapter 2 - The Crimson Thread"What did you say his name was?" I asked, dropping to one knee in front of Owen, ignoring the cold sweat breaking out across my neck. Every instinct in my body was screaming—not just as a billionaire CEO, but as a cornered predator.
Owen shrank back slightly, clutching his brother's sleeve. "He didn't tell us his name. But the woman with the red scarf—she called him 'The Chairman'."
Marissa gasped, dropping a glass of water she had brought for the boys. It shattered against the Italian marble floor, the sharp crack echoing through the massive office.
"The Chairman," Marissa whispered, her face draining of all color. "Nathan... that’s the internal moniker the old board used before you took over. No one outside the original founders' circle has used that term in over a decade."
"Except the man who built this company from blood and wire," I growled, standing up so fast my chair crashed backward.
Walter reached into the open briefcase and pulled out a stack of financial wire transfers printed on old-school dot-matrix paper, dated just three days prior. "It gets worse, Nathan. The funds draining out of your primary accounts aren't going to external shell corporations. They’re being funneled directly into a medical research facility operating under your father's old private foundation—Project Janus."
Project Janus.
A ghost project I had defunded and buried six years ago. Or so I thought.
"They're using the corporate reserves," I realized, the horrifying puzzle pieces clicking into place. "Every dollar I've made, every subsidiary I've acquired... it’s all been leveraged to keep my father’s underground biological research alive. And Julia... Julia stumbled onto it because of her investigative photography work in Portland."
I looked down at Caleb, who was still clutching his faded blue stuffed whale. The stitching on the whale's belly wasn't normal cotton; it was thick, heavy-duty Kevlar thread. With trembling fingers, I reached out and gently pulled at the loose seam.
May you like
Inside the stuffed animal wasn't stuffing. It was a micro-SD card and a heavy brass key stamped with the logo of the Whitmore Global subterranean vault.
"Mom said... if we ever got lost, you'd know what the key opened," Caleb whispered softly, looking up at me with big, tear-filled eyes.
