Chapter 15 - THE BROTHER’S CONFESSION
Dawn was breaking over Washington, painting the sky in violent streaks of bruised purple and blood orange. In an underground parking garage three blocks from the Capitol, Grant Vance sat inside his luxury sports car, his head resting against the steering wheel, shivering despite the blast of the heater.
The passenger door suddenly opened, and Rebecca slid into the leather seat.
Grant jumped, nearly dropping the half-empty flask of bourbon in his trembling hands. When he saw his sister's face—streaked with carbon, rain, and dried blood—his eyes widened in absolute terror.
"Becca... Jesus, Becca! You shouldn't be here! They’re watching me! Sterling’s men have been parked outside my apartment since midnight!"
"Look at me, Grant," Rebecca commanded, her voice cutting through his panic like a scalpel.
Grant turned, his face pale, dark circles bruising his eyes. The arrogant, immaculately tailored son who had laughed when their father humiliated Rebecca in front of the world was gone. In his place was a broken, terrified boy trapped in a web of treason he couldn't comprehend.
"Dad didn't tell you everything, did he?" Rebecca asked quietly.
Grant buried his face in his hands, a dry sob choking in his throat. "I thought it was just insider trading, Becca! I swear to God! Dad told me to move funds through Prometheus holding companies to buy up land around Vega. He said the government was planning a classified base expansion. I didn't know people were going to die! I didn't know your unit was the sacrifice!"
"The key to the Naval Intelligence Archives," Rebecca said, her hand reaching out, palm up. "You’re the registered trustee of Prometheus’s historical holdings. You have the access card to the sub-level vault."
Grant shook his head frantically. "If I give you that card, Sterling will kill me. You don't understand how deep this runs. Sterling isn't just a senator—he's the chairman of the Cerberus Oversight Council. They have private hit squads embedded in three different defense agencies. Dad was terrified of them! That's why he treated you like dirt, Becca! He wanted you out of the military! He tried to dishonorably discharge you so you wouldn't be deployed to sectors where Cerberus was operating!"
Rebecca froze, her breath catching in her throat. "What did you say?"
Grant looked at her, tears cutting clean lines through the grime on his cheeks. "The night at the gala... when Dad threw your medals on the floor and shoved you into the case... he wasn't just being a monster. Well, he was, but... an hour before you arrived, Sterling called him. Sterling told him you were sniffing around the Vega manifests. Sterling said if Dad didn't publicly disown you and strip your credibility, they were going to execute you in the parking lot and stage it as a veteran suicide."
The memory slammed into Rebecca with the force of an artillery shell. Her father’s trembling hands as he gripped her uniform. The strange, desperate wildness in his eyes that she had mistaken for pure hatred. *“You’re a disgrace!”* he had screamed, his voice cracking, throwing her to the ground while his body deliberately shielded her from the sightlines of the balcony above.
He hadn't been trying to destroy her. He had been trying to make her seem too disgraced, too irrelevant to be worth killing.
"He was trying to save your life the only way a coward knows how," Grant whispered. "And now... he's in federal prison, and Sterling is going to have him murdered during the cell block transfer at noon today."
Rebecca's hand closed into a tight, white-knuckled fist. "Give me the card, Grant."
Grant reached into his pocket and placed a black titanium keycard into her hand. "What are you going to do?"
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"I'm going to finish what our father was too weak to fight," she said.
***
