Chapter 15
Chapter 15: The Corporate Counter-Strike
The next morning, the blizzard had passed, leaving Chicago draped in a deceptive, sparkling white silence.
I didn't call my father. If Preston had leveraged data against his logistics network, the worst thing I could do was alert my father’s security team and trigger a chaotic, defensive war that might expose whatever vulnerability Preston had found.
Instead, I called Ethan Cross.
At 10:00 a.m., I walked into the ultra-modern, minimalist headquarters of Cross & Associates on Wacker Drive. Ethan was standing in his glass-walled office, looking over a digital architectural map of the Chicago riverfront.
When he saw me walk in, his eyes flicked to my tense posture, and he immediately closed his laptop.
“You look like a woman who just discovered a secondary system failure, Miss Vance,” Ethan said, pulling out a chair for me.
“Preston has blackmail material on my father’s logistics firm,” I said directly, sitting down and placing my hands flat on the glass table. “Manifests from 2022. He’s threatening to release them to the federal prosecutors if I don’t visit him in Cook County jail today.”
Ethan leaned back against his desk, crossing his arms. He didn't look shocked. He looked intrigued, his analytical mind already processing the data parameters.
“Your father, Julian Vance, is a powerful man,” Ethan said softly. “But thirty years ago, before the corporate restructuring, Vance Logistics handled secondary freight lines through the Port of Newark. Let’s just say… the regulatory oversight in those days wasn't as strict as it is now. If Preston has those original customs manifests, he could tie your father to legacy gray-market operations. It wouldn't just ruin your father's reputation—it could trigger a corporate asset forfeiture that would seize your pharmacy along with it.”
I felt a cold spike of adrenaline. “So Preston didn't just marry me because I was a prize. He married me as a shield. He knew that if my father ever discovered what he was doing, he could use those files as an insurance policy.”
“Exactly,” Ethan nodded. “He’s smarter than he looked at that breakfast table. But he made one fundamental error in his risk assessment.”
“What’s that?”
Ethan leaned forward, his gray eyes locking onto mine with an intense, lethal focus. “He thinks you care more about protecting your father’s past than building your own future. He thinks you’re going to act like a daughter instead of an operator.”
He slid a small, sleek device across the table—a digital decryption key disguised as a simple gold fountain pen.
“Cook County jail allows legal couriers to bring in digital tablets for discovery review,” Ethan said. “I have a contact in the warden's office. You’re going to walk into that visiting room as a legal consultant for Cross & Associates. When Preston brings up his encrypted ledger to show you his leverage, you’re going to plug this pen into his attorney's interface port.”
I picked up the heavy gold pen, feeling its weight in my fingers. “And what does it do?”
“It injects a localized network wipe,” Ethan smiled, a cold, predatory flash in his eyes. “It doesn't just delete his files, Maya. It mirrors his data back to my private servers, then replaces his original copies with corrupted, unreadable code. By the time he realizes his insurance policy is gone, he’ll already be standing in front of the judge with nothing left but an empty hand.”
I stood up, putting the pen into my coat pocket.
“Why are you helping me with this, Ethan?” I asked, looking at him closely. “What’s your stake in my family’s survival?”
May you like
Ethan walked over to the glass window, looking out over the icy river.
“I told you before, Maya,” he said quietly. “I’m launching an international fund. I don't care about your father’s past. I care about your future. And I want the woman running my clinical operations to be completely debt-free from her ghosts.”
