Chapter 2 - The Second Escape"Get her out of here!" Lena shrieked from the hallway upstairs. The sound of shattering glass and heavy thudding indicated she was fighting the security guards tasked with escorting her. "You can't do this! That house is half mine! Those are my children!"
"Secure her in the master suite and confiscate every phone and electronic device," Marcus ordered one of the guards without looking back, stepping down into the basement. He crouched beside me, shining the flashlight of his smartphone into the shadowy crawlspace beneath the steps.
The beam cut through the dust motes, revealing a space cluttered with old storage bins, holiday decorations, and—neatly tucked against the back foundation wall—a high-end leather briefcase and a secondary recording setup.
"Look at this," Marcus murmured, reaching out with a gloved hand to retrieve the briefcase. He unlatched the clasps. Inside were not family heirlooms, but burner phones, financial ledgers stamped with offshore routing numbers, and a signed copy of a non-disclosure agreement bearing Victor Sloane’s immaculate, sweeping signature.
"She wasn't acting alone," I said, fury finally replacing shock. Every hour I had spent away from home, every late-night conference call I took while believing I was securing my children's financial future, had been meticulously weaponized against me. Lena hadn't just grown distant; she had been recruited, financed, and coached.
Noah shifted uneasily beside me. "Dad... Mr. Sloane gave Mom a special phone. He told her that if you ever figured out the plan, she had to press a red button to upload something to the cloud."
Marcus’s head snapped up. "What cloud, Noah? Where does it go?"
Before Noah could answer, a piercing, high-pitched alarm began to shriek from the security system keypad by the basement door. The smart home hub flickered, all the interior lights flashing red in rapid succession.
Warning: System override initiated from remote terminal.
"He’s wiping the servers," Marcus cursed, leaping to his feet. "Adrian, Sloane knows we found the cabinet. He’s executing a remote data purge on the corporate network and personal drives connected to this house. If that data goes, the legal proof of the conspiracy vanishes with it."
"Not on my watch," I growled, handing Lily to one of the security guards. "Take her upstairs to safety. Noah, stay close to me."
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I lunged for the laptop resting on the production cart beside the camera. The screen was scrolling through thousands of lines of encrypted code, rapidly deleting files labeled COLE_COLLATERAL.
With adrenaline surging through my veins, I slammed my hands onto the keyboard, overriding the remote connection with my master administrator credentials—the very credentials Sloane was waiting for me to sign away in Manhattan.
