flash
The digital file hit Colonel Kenneth Cole’s secure server at 0300 hours. For a former Army Ranger who had commanded units through the high-risk zones of the Middle East, Cole was not a man easily shaken. But as the fifteen-second video played on his encrypted monitor, his jaw set into a hard, rigid line. / Chapter 14 / 20

Chapter 14 - The Prisoner's Secret

My phone chimed with an incoming encrypted video call routed through a proxy server in Eastern Europe. When I answered, Dahlia Higgins' face appeared on the screen. She was sitting in a visitor booth at the women's correctional facility, her hair disheveled, her eyes hollowed by fear.

"They killed Gordon, Mark," she whispered, her voice shaking uncontrollably as she glanced over her shoulder. "And they're coming for you. You think my father built Blackwood Ridge? Raymond Vance built it! My father laundered money for Vance's campaign funds and illegal defense contracts for twenty years."

"Why are you telling me this, Dahlia?" I asked coldly.

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She sl@pped my 66-year-old mother across the face, called her ""the maid,"" and proudly told everyone the house belonged to her. She had no idea I was the real owner—and by the end of that dinner, her perfect little lie would explode in front of every guest.

She sl@pped my 66-year-old mother across the face, called her ""the maid...

I did not scream. I did not hurl insults, smash crystal, or offer Evelyn Bennett the spectacle she so desperately craved.

I did not scream. I did not hurl insults, smash crystal, or offer Evelyn...

The door to the guest room locked with a quiet, satisfying click. Outside, the muffled sounds of Derek shouting about the ruined risotto faded into the background, drowned out by the thunderous beat of my own heart.

The door to the guest room locked with a quiet, satisfying click. Outsid...

"Because Luke and Reid aren't on the run to hide," she sobbed. "Vance broke them out to execute you, Paige, and Anna. Vance can't risk you finding the master drive. My father hid it in the old family lodge beneath the mill floorboards. It has every name, every bribe, every account number."

She leaned closer to the screen. "Save yourself, Mark. Because my brothers aren't coming for justice. They're coming for blood."

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