Chapter 4: The Puppet Master
By 6:00 a.m. the following morning, the Harper estate was surrounded.
Two sleek black sedans belonging to Harper Technologies' private security force were parked in the driveway, alongside a vehicle from the Chicago Police Department’s cybercrimes division. Daniel stood in the center of the living room, his face a grim mask of absolute focus. Margaret Dawson, the housekeeper, stood nearby, holding Lily and Sophie close to her side.
Victoria walked down the grand staircase, fully dressed in a sharp designer suit, looking as though she were preparing for a board meeting rather than a confrontation.
"What is the meaning of this, Daniel?" she asked, gesturing to the officers. "If this is about your daughters' ridiculous stories—"
"It's not a story, Victoria," Daniel said, tossing a thick folder of digital printouts onto the glass coffee table. "The IP address that received the Project Aether file belongs to a shell company registered in the Cayman Islands. The sole beneficiary of that company is Vanguard Tech—my primary market rival."
Victoria’s face hardened. She didn't flinch. "Fascinating corporate drama, Daniel. But what does that have to do with me? Anyone could have stolen my keycard."
"We checked the external perimeter cameras, Mrs. Harper," Detective Miller stepped forward, holding up a tablet. "The woman who entered the house using your keycard wasn't a stranger. It was your sister, Rebecca. The security gates opened for her because her facial biometrics were pre-approved under your account secondary access."
Victoria’s silence was her confession.
"You never cared about this family, did you?" Daniel asked, stepping closer to her, his voice vibrating with a dangerous mix of betrayal and disgust. "You targeted me. You used my grief after Emily's death to worm your way into this house, just so you could bleed my company dry for Vanguard."
"You were an easy target, Daniel," Victoria spat, the elegant facade completely shattering. She looked at Lily and Sophie with pure malice. "You and your pathetic, whining daughters. You were so desperate for a mother figure you didn't even check my background. Vanguard paid me ten million dollars just to get through that front door. Do you really think a few police officers scare me? The data is already gone. The download completed three days ago."
"Actually, it didn't," Daniel said, a slow, cold smile appearing on his face.
Victoria frowned. "What?"
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"The network terminal in my home office is a honey-pot system," Daniel explained, leaning back against the mantle. "It’s an exact replica of our main server, designed specifically to catch corporate spies. The files your sister downloaded weren't Project Aether. It was a corrupted, tracking-encoded sequence of dead code. The moment Rebecca plugged that flash drive into Vanguard's main mainframe this morning... it uploaded a tracking beacon directly to the FBI."
Right on cue, Detective Miller’s phone buzzed. He answered it, nodded, and looked back up at Victoria. "Your sister was just detained at O'Hare airport trying to board a flight to Zurich. And the federal court just issued a warrant for your immediate arrest, Mrs. Harper."
