Part 3: The Twenty-Year Lie
“Julian…” My father’s voice came through a small intercom speaker on the wall, raspy, strained, and trembling with an emotion I had never heard in him before. “Forgive me, son. I had to let you bury that empty box.”
I slammed my hands against the glass, tears hot against my cold cheeks. “You let me cry over a casket! You let Celeste bring the kids to a funeral! What is happening, Dad?!”
“The woman you call your mother is Agent Karen Vance,” Raymond explained, leaning forward against the armrests of his wheelchair. “She works for a private intelligence contractor hired by the cartel syndicate I testified against in ’99. They couldn’t kill me without losing access to the offshore account codes I held in my head, so they planted her to keep me captive in my own life.”
Agent Miller stepped beside me, drawing a sleek black sidearm from her shoulder holster and checking the chamber. “Karen discovered forty-eight hours ago that Raymond was preparing to transfer those codes directly to federal custody. She slipped a neurotoxin into his tea to paralyze him and force the transaction. We intercepted the ambulance, swapped his body with a medical dummy, and brought him here.”
“Then why did she send that text?” I asked, my blood running ice cold as I remembered the message: Come home alone.
“Because she knows Raymond wouldn’t leave those codes behind without ensuring your safety,” my father whispered, pointing a shaky finger at one of the surveillance monitors.
On the screen, my parents’ quiet suburban home was visible. Four dark, unmarked SUVs were parked in the driveway. Men in tactical gear were moving around the perimeter, securing the exits. And standing on the front porch, holding a tablet and a silenced pistol, was my “mother.”
“She knows you have the final decryption key, Julian,” Agent Miller said, looking at me. “Your father didn’t just give the gravedigger a key to this unit. He encoded the ledger access into something he gave you years ago.”
To see what object holds the multi-billion-dollar secret, continue reading below for Part 4.
