Chapter 16 - Unmasking the SerpentTwo days later, the financial news networks were in absolute freefall.
The arrest of Daria Kincaid and the simultaneous takedown of Julian Vance had blown the lid off decades of corporate corruption, embezzlement, and forced disappearances at Kincaid Enterprises. Federal investigators swarmed the corporate headquarters, hauling away truckloads of encrypted hard drives and paper documents.
Catherine, Penelope, and I sat in the sunlit dining room of a secure safehouse overlooking the ocean miles away from the city.
The media frenzy outside was deafening, but inside, there was finally peace. Or at least, I thought there was.
I sat at the mahogany table, reviewing the encrypted files Marcus had downloaded from Julian's personal laptop before the FBI seized it. Most of it was standard corporate extortion data—until I opened a hidden partition labeled Project Janus.
My mouse hovered over a single digital video file.
I clicked play.
The video feed flickered to life. It showed a dimly lit boardroom, decades old. A younger Daria Kincaid sat at the center of the table, flanked by several older men whose faces were blurred out. But sitting directly across from her, calmly sipping a glass of scotch, was a figure whose face I recognized instantly.
It was Arthur Sterling—the elderly, highly respected board member who had stood up in the boardroom and handed control of the company over to Catherine just days ago.
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The audio crackled to life, and Arthur’s calm, grandfatherly voice filled the room through my laptop speakers:
"Daria, if the boy ever gets too close to the truth about Catherine, we don't destroy him. We let him think he won. A man who believes he has conquered his enemies is a man who stops looking over his shoulder. And that is when we take everything."
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