Chapter 6 - Two Hundred Million Reasons to Kill Me
The first scream came from Vivian.
The second came from somewhere behind me.
Then two hundred wedding guests began moving at once.
Chairs overturned. Flowers scattered. People pushed toward the lawn while police officers rushed toward the glass doors. The musicians abandoned their instruments. The officiant ducked behind the altar.
Daniel reached me before I could take another step.
He pulled me behind one of the stone columns and shielded me with his body.
“Stay down.”
“What’s in the cart?”
“We don’t know.”
Across the aisle, Detective Cole shouted evacuation instructions. Officers forced open a side gate and directed guests toward the far garden.
Lucas had disappeared into the hotel.
The silver cart remained wedged against the glass doors.
A small device beneath the laptop continued blinking.
Adrian stood several feet from the altar, staring at it.
For the first time since I had known him, he looked genuinely afraid.
Not angry.
Not calculating.
Afraid.
Vivian ran toward him, but an officer intercepted her.
“My son!” she screamed. “Let me reach my son!”
“Move toward the garden, ma’am.”
“Do you know who I am?”
The officer did not care.
Daniel guided me behind the pavilion wall. Sophie found us seconds later, barefoot and carrying her shoes.
“You’re alive,” she gasped.
“So are you.”
She wrapped both arms around me, then turned on Daniel.
“What is that thing?”
“Bomb squad is responding.”
The word bomb spread through the crowd.
Panic intensified.
I looked toward the cart again.
The device blinked at a steady interval.
Too visible.
Too theatrical.
Lucas wanted it to be noticed.
“It may not be a bomb,” I said.
Daniel kept one hand on my shoulder.
“We treat it as one.”
“He pushed it into the doorway after he knew police were here.”
“He may be trying to cause casualties.”
“Or a distraction.”
Daniel looked at me.
“For what?”
I thought about Vale Medical’s network.
The attacks.
The laptop on the cart.
The copied authorization token.
“He wants access to something inside the hotel.”
“Your suite?”
“Or the mobile command station.”
Daniel immediately spoke into his radio.
“Secure operations room. Full lockdown.”
A response crackled through his earpiece.
Then his expression changed.
“What?”
“The operations room is empty.”
“Where is Detective Cole’s technical officer?”
“Missing.”
I looked toward the hotel.
“Lucas took him.”
Daniel signaled to two officers and gave rapid instructions.
Adrian suddenly ran.
Not toward the garden.
Toward the service path beside the building.
Detective Cole saw him and shouted, “Stop!”
He ignored her.
Two officers pursued him.
Vivian screamed his name.
I rose.
Daniel pulled me back.
“Stay here.”
“He knows where Lucas is going.”
“That doesn’t mean you follow him.”
“Then you follow him.”
Daniel hesitated only a second before sending another member of his team after the officers.
Adrian reached the side entrance but found it locked. He struck the door with both hands, then turned toward the loading dock.
Police caught him near the hedges.
He struggled as they forced him to the ground.
“I’m trying to help!” he shouted. “Lucas has lost control!”
Detective Cole approached.
“Lost control of what?”
Adrian looked toward the blinking device.
“That isn’t a bomb.”
Cole stopped.
“What is it?”
“A network transmitter.”
“For what purpose?”
He said nothing.
She crouched beside him.
“Mr. Blackwell, this is the moment when silence stops protecting you.”
“I want immunity.”
Vivian stared at him from twenty feet away.
“Adrian, don’t say anything!”
He looked at his mother.
Something passed between them.
Fear.
Blame.
Perhaps the first recognition that their alliance was ending.
Detective Cole lowered her voice.
“If that device threatens hospital systems, patients could die. There will be no private negotiation if you allow that to happen.”
Adrian swallowed.
“It mirrors wireless traffic. Lucas planned to capture Emily’s emergency credentials when her security team connected to the hotel network.”
My stomach turned.
The attack had been bait.
They expected us to respond from the venue.
Every emergency login provided another opportunity to steal access.
“What was the ultimate target?” I called.
Cole looked at me, then back at Adrian.
He refused to answer.
I stepped around Daniel.
“Two hundred million dollars wasn’t enough?”
Adrian’s face twisted.
“You think this was only about your shares?”
“What else?”
“Your father’s source code.”
The words hit harder than I expected.
Vale Medical’s most valuable asset was not the company itself. It was a predictive clinical platform my father had spent fifteen years developing. Hospitals used it to detect medication conflicts, identify high-risk patients, and coordinate emergency treatment.
In the wrong hands, the code could be sold, copied, or manipulated.
“You were going to steal it,” I said.
“Lucas arranged a buyer.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
Vivian shouted again.
“He’s lying! My son knows nothing!”
Adrian looked at her with sudden fury.
“You brought Lucas into this.”
“You were drowning in debt!”
“You said the marriage would solve it.”
“You promised she would sign!”
Their voices carried across the garden.
Guests stopped moving and turned.
Phones rose.
Vivian realized too late that hundreds of people were watching.
Her face collapsed into outrage.
“This woman manipulated him!” she screamed, pointing at me. “She dangled wealth in front of my son and treated him like an employee!”
I walked toward her.
Daniel stayed close.
“I loved your son.”
“You controlled him.”
“I trusted him.”
“You investigated him.”
“After I heard him planning my death.”
A murmur passed through the crowd.
Some guests had heard rumors. Now they heard the accusation clearly.
Vivian looked around at the witnesses.
“This is absurd.”
Detective Cole addressed her.
“Did you discuss causing a boat accident after Emily transferred her company shares?”
“No.”
“Did you threaten Ms. Vale this morning?”
“No.”
“Did you participate in holding Naomi Pierce at your estate?”
“I have no idea who that is.”
“Your wine cellar suggests otherwise.”
Vivian’s expression faltered.
Adrian laughed bitterly from the ground.
“She’ll blame Lucas.”
“Be quiet!” Vivian snapped.
“She always does this,” he said. “She builds the plan, then finds someone else to bury.”
Vivian lunged toward him.
An officer restrained her.
“You weak, ungrateful fool!”
The crowd reacted as though watching a wall collapse.
The elegant Blackwell family, admired for decades, was turning on itself beside an overturned row of wedding chairs.
Detective Cole signaled to her officers.
“Take them both into custody.”
Vivian fought.
“You cannot arrest me based on lies!”
“Vivian Blackwell, you are being detained in connection with conspiracy, unlawful imprisonment, extortion, and attempted theft of protected commercial data.”
Adrian stopped struggling.
“Attempted theft?” he asked. “What about the boat?”
Cole looked at him.
“We’ll discuss that downtown.”
As officers pulled him upright, he met my eyes.
For a second, I saw the man who had once brought soup to my apartment when I had the flu. The man who danced with me in the kitchen. The man who sat beside me at my father’s memorial and promised I would never face grief alone again.
Maybe some of those moments had been real to him.
Maybe none of them had.
It no longer mattered.
“You did this,” he said.
“No.”
I looked at the police holding him.
“You planned it. I survived it.”
His expression hardened.
“You won’t survive what happens to the company.”
Before I could respond, an explosion of sound came from the hotel.
Not a bomb.
A fire alarm.
Red lights flashed behind the glass doors. Sprinklers activated in the lobby. Guests screamed again.
Daniel’s radio crackled.
“Fire reported in the lower service level. Possible electrical ignition.”
“Lucas,” I said.
Detective Cole sent officers toward the service entrance.
The blinking device remained in place while the bomb squad approached.
A hotel manager ran across the lawn.
“The server room is beneath the ballroom,” he said. “That’s where the fire started.”
Of course.
Lucas was destroying evidence.
Or creating a path to the building’s network.
Daniel looked at me.
“You’re leaving now.”
“My company systems are connected through that room.”
“Which is why you cannot stay.”
“Daniel—”
“That is not a request.”
Sophie took my hand.
“He’s right.”
I hated that they were right.
An armored security vehicle waited beyond the garden gate. Daniel’s team surrounded us as we moved toward it.
Behind me, officers led Adrian and Vivian in opposite directions.
Vivian continued shouting.
Adrian did not.
He watched me walk away in the wedding dress he believed would become my burial shroud.
At the vehicle, my phone rang.
Priya.
I answered immediately.
“Tell me.”
“We restored medication verification at all facilities.”
Relief flooded through me.
“And the source code?”
“Still secure.”
“Are you certain?”
“No.”
The relief vanished.
“What happened?”
“The attacker accessed an archived development directory for eleven seconds.”
“Was anything copied?”
“We’re analyzing the logs.”
“Can you isolate the system?”
“We already did.”
I climbed into the vehicle with Sophie.
Daniel remained outside coordinating with police.
“Priya,” I said, “who had access to that directory?”
“You, me, three senior engineers, and Naomi.”
“Anyone else?”
A pause.
“Your father.”
“My father died six years ago.”
“His administrative account was never deleted.”
I closed my eyes.
My father had built the system. After his death, none of us had wanted to erase his name from the access list.
Sentiment had created a vulnerability.
“Was his account used?”
“Yes.”
“How did they obtain the credentials?”
“We don’t know.”
I did.
My father kept backup keys and old passwords in a leather notebook stored in the private office at our lake house.
Adrian had visited that house dozens of times.
He knew where the office was.
He knew I never locked the desk.
“Check whether the archived directory contains the complete code,” I said.
“It doesn’t.”
“What’s missing?”
“The clinical decision engine.”
My father had separated the most sensitive component from the rest of the platform. Only two people had known where the offline copy was stored.
My father.
And me.
Adrian could steal every other file and still lack the piece that made the software valuable.
For the first time that day, I smiled.
“Let them think they have it,” I said.
Priya fell silent.
“What?”
“Do not announce that the copy is incomplete. Create a controlled environment and allow any stolen version to authenticate once.”
“You want the buyer to activate it.”
“Yes.”
“That could reveal their location.”
“And everyone involved.”
Sophie stared at me.
“You’re setting another trap.”
“No.”
I looked back at the wedding venue disappearing behind us, smoke rising faintly above the service wing.
“I’m finishing the one they started.”
Daniel climbed into the front seat.
“They found the technical officer alive in a storage room. Lucas took his credentials and escaped through the loading dock.”
“Do we know what vehicle he used?”
“A florist van.”
“Where is he going?”
“We don’t know.”
My phone buzzed.
A new message appeared from Lucas.
A photograph of the Blackwell family’s lake house.
Below it were seven words.
BRING THE MISSING CODE, OR ADRIAN TAKES THE FALL.
I showed Daniel.
His expression darkened.
“He wants you at the lake house.”
“Yes.”
“You’re not going.”
I looked at the image.
One upstairs window glowed despite the afternoon light.
Inside that room was my father’s old office.
And inside the office was something more dangerous than stolen code.
Six months before his death, my father had begun investigating financial irregularities involving one of Vale Medical’s early investors.
That investor’s name was Charles Blackwell.
Adrian’s late father.
Lucas had not chosen our family by accident.
The conspiracy had started long before Adrian proposed.
May you like
And whatever Lucas expected to find at the lake house might expose why my father had distrusted the Blackwells from the beginning.
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