Chapter 7 - Ghost from the PastI stared at the paper on my desk, the words burning themselves into my retinas.
"Revenge for what?" I demanded, looking up at Marcus. "I built this company from the ground up. I haven't had any bitter enemies since my old partnership dissolved back in Chicago ten years ago—and Marcus, that partner bought me out legally. We shook hands."
"His name was Julian Vance—no relation to me," Marcus said quietly, pulling out a photograph from the file. He placed it beside the letter.
The man in the photo was lean, with sharp features, cold gray eyes, and a scar running along his jawline. I hadn't seen that face in over a decade. Julian Vance had been my co-founder at our very first tech startup in Chicago, a company that crashed spectacularly under mysterious circumstances just weeks before we secured our first major venture capital round.
"Julian?" I whispered, shaking my head in disbelief. "That's impossible. Julian lost everything when the first company went under. He disappeared. The police suspected he fled the country to escape embezzlement charges."
"He didn't flee, Adrian," Marcus said, tapping the photograph. "He went underground. And according to these financial records, Julian has been secretly bankrolling Victor Sloane for the last five years. Every investor, every boardroom hurdle, every manufactured crisis you faced? It was all orchestrated by Julian to isolate you, break your family, and take everything you built—not for profit, but to watch you experience the exact same ruin he did a decade ago."
A sudden wave of nausea hit me. I thought back to the past eighteen months—the missed birthdays, the mounting stress, the creeping isolation that made Lena vulnerable to Sloane’s manipulation. It wasn't just corporate greed. It was a ten-year vendetta.
"Where is he now?" I asked, my voice dropping to a dangerous whisper.
Marcus hesitated, looking down at his tablet. "Federal marshals raided his last known address in Boston this morning. The house was completely empty... except for one thing left streaming on a live monitor."
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"What was it?"
"A real-time security feed of your driveway."
