Chapter 421
Watch closely, traitor, I thought, my pulse steadying.
When our turn came, I stepped up to the main console. The room fell into suffocating silence. With a calm, deliberate motion, I inserted the secure flash drive into the port.
The massive screen didn’t display corrupted black code. Instead, it filled with a brilliant, ultra-high-definition scan of the Founding Covenant. Every stroke of ink, every crack in the wax seal was rendered with perfect clarity. The document glowed with undeniable authority, proving Dallas’s administration was as ironclad as ever.
A collective murmur of approval rippled through the Elders. They leaned forward, nodding. Dallas’s position was instantly, immovably solidified.
I turned my gaze back to Pippa. The smug smile had melted from her face, replaced by pure, wide-eyed terror. Realizing her sabotage had failed, she slowly rose from her seat and began edging toward the heavy oak doors.
I didn’t wait for the applause to finish. I followed her.
The antechamber outside was dead quiet, the thick crimson carpet absorbing my footsteps. The stern portraits of past Marshall Alphas stared down from the walls, their painted eyes judging the traitor in their midst.
“Going somewhere, Pippa?” I asked, my voice cutting through the silence.
She spun around, her face ashen. “How…” she stammered, backing away until she hit the wall. “How is that possible? It was destroyed.”
“I fixed it,” I said, stepping closer. “Did you really think Braydon Hyde’s pathetic software tricks could erase our legacy? But that’s not even the best part. Leo didn’t just recover the data — he traced the malicious code’s entry point directly to your specific workstation login.”
Her breath hitched. “You can’t prove anything! My father is a respected Elder in this Pack! You can’t touch me!”
I didn’t flinch. I looked at her with the cold, calculating pragmatism I had learned from the very best. “Eleanor Marshall only respects strength and usefulness,” I told her, my tone devoid of sympathy. “She doesn’t care about your father’s name. And you have just proven yourself to be a liability.”
Pippa trembled, her eyes darting toward the exit, but there was nowhere to run.
I squared my shoulders. I was human — but I carried the authority of the King’s wife. “Security will escort you to the holding cells. You will be handed over to the Gamma for interrogation regarding corporate espionage. After that, you will face the law.”
Pippa’s knees buckled. She collapsed to the floor, a sobbing, broken mess, her career in corporate espionage erased by a single command.
The heavy doors of the Council Chamber swung open and Lena stepped out, clutching her tablet. She looked from the weeping traitor on the floor to me, her eyes wide with newfound reverence.
“Lena,” I said, my voice returning to a calm, professional cadence. “Take the final physical copies and the meeting minutes up to Dallas’s suite immediately. I’ll call for Gamma Vance Decker to come and collect his prisoner.”