Chapter 4 - The Surveillance TrapThe champagne party outside the glass garage had completely dissolved into chaos. Guests were whispering, whispering into their phones, or hastily walking toward their luxury cars to escape whatever scandal was unfolding at the Blackwood estate.
Camille looked between her shaking father and me, her expression finally shifting from arrogance to genuine panic.
“Dad... what is he talking about? Tell me he’s lying.”
Victor didn't answer. He stared at the floor, his massive corporate empire crumbling around him in real-time as the ghosts of his past finally caught up to him.
I slipped the notebook back into my jacket pocket and pulled out my smartphone.
“You thought fifteen years was enough time to bury the truth, Victor,” I said calmly. “You thought my mother and I would stay poor, broken, and silent forever. But you forgot one simple rule of mechanics: evidence doesn't rust if it’s kept in the dark.”
Victor’s head snapped up. “What did you do?”
“I didn't just walk into your mansion today to look at a car,” I replied, tapping the screen of my phone. “The moment I connected to your garage’s Wi-Fi network using the bypass code my father left in his manual, my phone automatically synced with the security server hard-drive hidden behind the display case.”
The massive digital display screen mounted on the garage wall suddenly flickered to life.
Instead of pictures of Victor’s sixtieth birthday party, the screen began playing high-definition digital recovery logs, audio recordings, and digitized police files from fifteen years ago—files that had mysteriously vanished from the municipal archives the morning after my father’s death.
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“Victor, if you move contraband through the shipping docks using my registration, I’m going to federal authorities,” my father’s voice rang out clearly from the garage speakers.
Followed by Victor’s cold, arrogant reply: “You don’t go anywhere, Daniel. You take the fall, or your wife and newborn son pay the price.”
