Chapter 15 - Whispers in the Vault
Murmurs of shock rippled through the boardroom. Two private security guards stationed by the mahogany doors straightened up, their hands twitching toward their holsters.
"Mind your tongue, boy," a senior board member barked.
Marcos didn't raise his voice. Instead, he pulled a sleek silver thumb drive from his pocket and tossed it onto the obsidian table. It skittered across the polished surface and came to a halt right against Hector Sterling’s gold fountain pen.
"Plug it in," Marcos said calmly. "Display partition four."
Hector glared at the boy for three agonizing seconds before nodding to the head IT director seated in the corner. The technician quickly retrieved the drive and inserted it into the central conference console.
Instantly, the four massive 8K monitors lining the boardroom wall flared to life. But they didn't show patent documents or legal contracts.
They showed bank transfer logs. Dozens of them. Spanning nine years.
"What is the meaning of this?" Hector demanded, though the faintest trace of color drained from his weathered cheeks.
"Álvaro Vance-Sterling was an idiot, but he was an idiot who kept insurance," Mateo explained, pacing slowly along the length of the table with the casual grace of a tenured professor lecturing freshmen. "When Álvaro took your eighty-five million dollars, he didn't put it into our research. He funneled forty million of it into shell corporations registered under the names of three of your sitting board members—specifically, Mr. Henderson, Mrs. Croft, and yourself, Mr. Sterling."
The room erupted into gasps. Henderson and Croft visibly stiffened, their faces turning the color of curdled milk.
"You fabricated this!" Henderson sputtered, slamming his palm on the table. "This is slander! Falsification of corporate records!"
"No, Mr. Henderson," Marcos interjected, stepping beside his brother. "It’s an exact cryptographic mirror of the transaction ledger stored on your private server in the Cayman branch. The Prometheus algorithm isn't just an energy framework—it’s an advanced recursive decryptor. It took Mateo and me forty-five minutes before breakfast this morning to crack your offshore firewall using the mathematical keys Álvaro stupidly left in his personal emails."
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Mateo leaned over the table, his hazel eyes locking directly into Hector Sterling’s furious gaze.
"You didn't fund Álvaro because you believed in Prometheus," Mateo whispered softly. "You funded him because he was laundering money for your cartel's illicit defense contracts. If the Department of Justice sees this partition, eighty-five million dollars won't be your debt, Mr. Sterling. A life sentence in federal prison will be your reality."
