“Daddy,my brother is trapped”says a little girl in an emergency call,not knowing a CEO would answ

By 3:00 AM, Harrison had transferred Clare, Arya, and Tyler out of Milbrook General using a private medical transport. He moved them directly to his private penthouse in Manhattan—a heavily fortified, multi-million-dollar fortress occupying the top two floors of a high-rise with round-the-clock security personnel.

As the children slept safely in the master guest suite, Harrison sat in his dimly lit study, reviewing security footage provided by James. On his laptop screen, a dark figure dressed in an unmarked raincoat could be seen setting the steel trap along the forest path at 2:00 PM that afternoon.

"Can you clean up the face?" Harrison asked James, who stood respectfully behind his desk.

"We ran facial recognition through our internal database," James replied grimly, placing a printed dossier on the desk. "It’s not an outsider, Mr. Blackwell. It’s Thomas Vance."

Harrison stared at the photograph. Thomas Vance was Victoria’s younger brother and the Chief Operating Officer of Vance Global—the very company Harrison was supposed to merge with that evening.

"Why would Thomas target two children in a forest outside the city?" Harrison demanded.

"Because Thomas Vance didn't know they were your children," James explained. "Our cyber team breached the private server receiving the video feed. Thomas wasn't trying to hurt your kids specifically, sir. He was targeting Clare Morgan."

Harrison stood up so fast his chair rolled back into the wall. "Explain."

"Clare’s art studio in Riverside Heights sits on a twelve-acre parcel of land," James revealed. "What Clare doesn't know—and what your father and the Vance family have been hiding for five years—is that her land sits directly on top of one of the largest lithium deposits in the Northeast. Vance Global tried to buy the land from her three months ago through a shell company, but she refused to sell because she raised the kids there."

The pieces of the puzzle began locking together with terrifying clarity.

If Clare died or was incapacitated, her property would go into probate, allowing Vance Global to acquire the land at auction for peanuts. And if Harrison signed the fifty-million-dollar merger, Vance Global would merge those lithium rights directly into Blackwell Industries, netting Victoria’s family billions of dollars in profit.

"They tried to eliminate her," Harrison whispered, his voice trembling with pure rage. "And my children almost paid the price."

"It gets worse, sir," James added hesitatingly. "The server logs show that Thomas Vance didn't act alone. The order to clear the land by 'any means necessary' came directly from an encrypted account owned by your father, Arthur Blackwell."

Harrison stood frozen in the center of the room. The men he had striven to impress his entire life—his father and his corporate partners—viewed human lives as nothing more than lines on a ledger. They had built a trap that almost killed his three-year-old son.

"James," Harrison said, his voice dropping into a register of quiet, terrifying calm. "Call the media relations department. Tell them I am holding an emergency press conference at the Blackwell Towers auditorium at 9:00 AM tomorrow."