Chapter 8 - The Device in My Suitcase
I turned toward Ethan.
“No.”
His face was blank.
“Claire, I didn’t.”
Thomas chuckled.
“Still protecting him.”
Ethan stepped closer.
“I have never seen that device.”
Thomas’s smile disappeared.
“Lying has always been your weakest skill.”
He took out his phone.
A security video appeared.
My bedroom.
Two nights earlier.
Ethan entered while I slept.
He knelt beside my suitcase.
He opened the inner lining.
Then he placed something black inside.
My knees almost gave way.
The timestamp was clear.
2:14 A.M.
I remembered that night.
Ethan had told me he was working late downstairs.
I looked at him.
“You put it there.”
Ethan stared at the video.
“That isn’t what happened.”
“It’s you.”
“Yes.”
“You opened my suitcase.”
“Yes.”
“You put something inside.”
His voice cracked.
“A tracker.”
Thomas laughed.
“Convenient.”
Ethan faced me.
“I found the suitcase three weeks ago.”
“I knew you were planning to leave.”
“I was terrified Barbara would stop you.”
“So I put a tracker in it.”
I stared at him.
“You tracked me?”
“Yes.”
The truth was almost as bad as Thomas’s accusation.
“You invaded my privacy because you thought it would protect me.”
“I know how it sounds.”
“It sounds exactly like your family.”
That hit him.
He looked away.
Samuel picked up the black device.
“This isn’t a tracker.”
Thomas said, “Correct.”
Samuel examined it.
“There’s no power source.”
“It’s a physical encryption token.”
Ethan shook his head.
“That’s not what I planted.”
Thomas’s men entered the office.
One moved toward me.
I stepped backward.
Then every light in the building shut off.
Darkness swallowed the room.
Someone grabbed my arm.
I swung hard.
A man cursed.
An emergency light flickered red.
Ethan appeared beside me.
“Run.”
We moved through my father’s private conference room.
Samuel followed.
Behind us, Thomas shouted.
The three of us reached the stairwell.
Samuel stopped at the nineteenth floor.
“Claire.”
“What?”
“There’s another vault.”
“In this building?”
“Your father built it after he learned Thomas was still alive.”
We entered an unfinished office suite.
Behind a false electrical panel was a biometric scanner.
It lit up when I approached.
MERCER HEIR IDENTIFIED.
My stomach tightened.
The wall opened.
Inside was a small steel room.
A computer activated automatically.
A video of my father appeared.
He looked directly into the camera.
“Claire.”
“If you have reached this room, then someone has already shown you convincing evidence that Ethan betrayed you.”
Ethan and I exchanged a stunned glance.
My father continued.
“Do not decide yet.”
I swallowed.
“Why?”
The recording could not answer me.
But it continued.
“Because Thomas Whitmore’s greatest weapon has never been money.”
“It is manufactured certainty.”
The screen changed.
The bedroom footage appeared.
Then it zoomed in.
Ethan did place a small device inside my suitcase.
But after Ethan left, someone else entered.
Barbara.
She removed Ethan’s tracker.
Then she inserted the encryption token.
Ethan closed his eyes.
I felt something inside me crack.
Not trust.
That had already broken.
Certainty.
Barbara had wanted me to believe Ethan planted the key.
Thomas had wanted the same.
But why?
My father’s recording gave the answer.
“If they are trying to turn you against Ethan, it means Ethan possesses something they still need.”
I looked at him.
“What do you have?”
Ethan whispered.
“I don’t know.”
Then Samuel stared at Ethan’s wedding ring.
“Oh, God.”
Ethan followed his gaze.
Samuel pointed.
“Your father gave you that ring before the wedding, didn’t he?”
Ethan nodded slowly.
Samuel said, “Take it off.”
Inside the ring was a tiny engraved sequence.
Sixteen numbers.
My father’s computer immediately recognized them.
SECOND AUTHORIZATION KEY DETECTED.
Thomas needed me.
But he also needed Ethan.
And that meant our marriage had not merely been a trap.
May you like
It had been a lock.
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