Chapter 6 - The Shadows of the Past
With Christopher temporarily neutralized, I focused entirely on my recovery and my children. Two weeks after the confrontation, I was discharged from the hospital and moved into the Sloan estate—a heavily guarded, sprawling historic manor on the outskirts of the city.
The estate was a sanctuary. The air was clean, the gardens were lush, and for the first time in years, I felt a sense of peace. But I knew the peace was fragile. Christopher was desperate, and desperate men do stupid things.
My suspicions were confirmed when Arthur arrived at the estate one afternoon, his expression deeply troubled. We sat in the sunlit library, the twins sleeping in a double bassinet nearby.
"We have a problem, Veronica," Arthur said, opening a folder. "It’s about Christopher's family."
I sighed, rubbing my temples. "What about them? I thought his parents retired to Florida on the allowance I secretly funded."
"They did. But Christopher has contacted his older brother, Julian Vale."
I froze. Julian Vale. The black sheep of the Vale family. He was a brilliant, but highly unstable software engineer who had been expelled from MIT years ago for hacking government databases. Unlike Christopher, who was all polish and no substance, Julian possessed a dangerous intellect. He had spent the last five years in Eastern Europe, working in the shadows of the cybercrime underworld.
"Julian is back in the country," Arthur said. "And according to our intelligence, Christopher has promised him half of Vale Dynamics' proprietary source code if Julian can help him bypass our security protocols and retrieve the encryption keys from our central servers."
"He wants to steal the AI core," I said, my heart tightening. "The core is the heart of Sloan Holdings. If they leak it to the open market, it will destroy our competitive advantage overnight."
"Yes," Arthur agreed. "And worse, Julian has no morals. He doesn’t care about corporate lawsuits or federal investigations. He operates in the dark."
"Then we fight him in the dark," I said, a cold determination settling over me. "Marcus!"
Marcus entered the room instantly. "Yes, Ms. Sloan?"
"I want our cybersecurity team on a red-alert status. Every server, every backup, every cloud database owned by Sloan Holdings and Vale Dynamics must be locked down with multi-factor biometric authentication. And I want a twenty-four-hour physical guard on the primary data center downtown."
"Already on it, ma'am," Marcus said. "But Julian is creative. He won't just try to hack us from a laptop. He’ll look for a weak point. A physical exploit."
"The weak point is Christopher," I mused, thinking quickly. "Christopher doesn't know anything about technology. He’ll have to bring Julian to the physical vicinity of our servers to grant him access. Keep a close watch on Christopher’s movements. The moment he connects with Julian, we strike."
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"Understood," Marcus said with a firm nod.
I looked down at Leo and Ava. The battle was no longer just about a corporate throne or a failed marriage. It was a war to protect the world my children would inherit. And I would be damned if I let two greedy, desperate brothers tear it down.
