Chapter 11 - The Server Inside His Company
Everett’s company security chief, Marcus Lane, denied knowledge of the deepfake.
My goal was to find who controlled the server.
Brooks Meridian had recently installed an internal media model used for executive training simulations.
It could recreate faces and voices from corporate footage.
Eleanor had years of video of me.
Margaret had board-level access.
But the deepfake required approval from Everett’s biometric token.
He checked the authorization log.
Approved at 11:07 p.m. Christmas Eve.
While he was holding Noah in my hallway.
Someone cloned his token.
Only Marcus Lane had access to the backup key.
Everett had trusted Marcus since college.
He brought him into the company.
Promoted him.
Made him godfather-designate for Noah.
Marcus denied everything until investigators showed the server records.
Then he asked for immunity.
He admitted Margaret recruited him years earlier.
She paid his father’s medical debts.
In exchange, he monitored Everett’s relationships and blocked anyone who threatened the succession plan.
He approved my background check.
He sent Eleanor my medical history.
He cloned Everett’s phone during the business trip.
Everett looked as if he had been struck.
“Were you ever my friend?”
Marcus answered honestly.
“At first.”
That hurt more.
Marcus said the deepfake was not created to win permanently.
Only to delay.
Margaret needed forty-eight hours to relocate the original trust archive.
Where?
He gave us a shipping manifest.
A private railcar was leaving New York for Canada on December 29.
Cargo listed as Christmas exhibition materials.
Weight: four tons.
The archive.
Federal agents prepared to intercept it.
Then Marcus revealed another fact.
Eleanor had never wanted the archive moved.
She wanted Margaret exposed.
The conflict between them had become open.
Eleanor sent the hospital envelope to Everett deliberately.
She allowed me to escape with Noah.
She left the adoption file where we could find it.
She was using us to destroy her mother.
I had believed every clue came from a victim or mistake.
Some came from Eleanor.
That did not make her an ally.
It made us her weapon.
Everett asked Marcus where Eleanor was.
He gave an address.
St. Catherine’s Monastery.
Not an active monastery.
A private retirement residence for women tied to the original maternity network.
Margaret lived there under another name.
Eleanor was already inside.
When agents arrived, they found the residence abandoned.
A Christmas dinner remained warm on the tables.
Wheelchairs stood empty.
In Margaret’s room, one sentence had been written across the mirror in lipstick:
THE DAUGHTER ALWAYS THINKS SHE IS THE REVOLUTION.
Below it lay Eleanor’s pearl earring covered in blood.
May you like
I thought Eleanor was manipulating us from safety—but the evidence suggested Margaret had finally turned on her own daughter.
The blood analysis proved it did not belong to Eleanor.
