Chapter 4 - THE ARCHITECT'S LIE
Bridget backed away, her back hitting the wall. She looked at the man she had wept over for three years. The man whose funeral she had barely been able to afford.
"You're dead," she whispered. "I buried an empty casket. I raised our daughter alone. I had twenty-four dollars, David! Twenty-four dollars!"
"I had to," David said, his eyes scanning the hallway behind him before he stepped further into the room, closing the ruined door as best he could. "Gabriel discovered what Lila was. He was going to take her, Bridget. He was going to use her to build an uncrackable global communication network for the syndicate. The only way to save her was to make them think I was dead, so they would stop looking for the source of the genetic code."
"So you left us to starve?!" Bridget screamed, her voice a ragged whisper.
"I left you safe!" David hissed back. "But Gabriel didn't stop. He tracked down my old ledgers. He staged that entire assassination attempt tonight at the gala, Bridget! Don't you see? The 'Kurogawa assassins' were his own men. He hired them to stage a fake poisoning so Lila would have to reveal herself to save him. He manipulated you into bringing her directly to his fortress!"
Bridget felt the room spin. The gala. The sake. The four Japanese men.
It had all been a play. A massive, expensive, terrifying piece of theater designed to test Lila’s abilities and force Bridget to run straight into Gabriel’s waiting arms.
"Mommy?" Lila's voice came from beneath the bed. She crawled out, her eyes wide as she looked at the scarred man standing in the room. "Daddy?"
David’s hard facade cracked. He dropped his weapon and fell to his knees, tears welling in his eyes. "Lila... oh god, my sweet girl. I'm so sorry."
"Don't touch her!" Bridget snapped, snatching Lila up and pulling her behind her. "You lied to me for years, David. You're still lying. If you wanted to keep us safe, why are you here now? Why did you attack this place?"
"Because Gabriel is about to upload the final phase of his network," David said, standing up, his expression hardening once more as distant gunfire began to echo from the lower levels. Gabriel's actual security force was finally mobilizing. "He needs Lila to authorize the final encryption key. If he gets her, she will spend the rest of her life locked in a basement, decoding trans-Pacific black-market ledgers. We have to go. Now."
"And where do we go?" Bridget asked. "You're a ghost, and Gabriel owns this city."
"We go to the redwoods," David said, pulling a spare weapon from his tactical vest and tossing it to Bridget. She caught it clumsily, her hands shaking. "I have a safehouse in Mendocino. But we have to make it to the garage first."
They moved through the darkened corridors of the estate like ghosts. The halls were a warzone—unmarked tactical operatives clashed with Gabriel’s private militia. David moved with a lethal, terrifying efficiency that Bridget couldn't reconcile with the gentle man who used to complain about paper cuts at the kitchen table.
As they reached the underground garage, the heavy steel security doors began to slide shut.
"Run!" David yelled.
They slid under the closing steel door just in time, tumbling onto the cold concrete of the garage. But as they stood up, the headlights of three black SUVs flashed on, blinding them.
Standing in front of the middle SUV, holding his silver pocket watch, was Gabriel Voss.
"You always were a brilliant strategist, David," Gabriel said, his voice echoing off the concrete walls. "But you always forgot one thing. I don't just hire security. I write the software they use to track you. Did you really think you could slip into my home undetected?"
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Gabriel pointed a finger at Lila.
"Give me the child, David. Or your wife dies first this time."
