Chapter 9 - THE AGENT WITH TWO BADGES
Agent Ruiz had disappeared from Marlowe twenty minutes earlier.
Security footage showed her entering a service elevator alone.
No one saw her taken.
Victor’s video suggested two possibilities.
He captured her.
Or she went willingly and staged the restraints.
Daniel distrusted her immediately.
Nathaniel resisted.
“She helped rescue the girls from the rail tunnel.”
“Victor sacrifices operations when it benefits him,” Daniel said.
“He may have wanted us to find them.”
I had learned that every rescue could be another path Victor designed.
Still, Ruiz had repeatedly protected me.
She stopped Jonathan’s access to Amelia.
She exposed Judge Crane.
She entered armed facilities beside us.
Trust built through actions.
But Victor understood actions could be performed.
The video contained a clue.
Ruiz’s hands were tied in front rather than behind.
The rope knot was loose.
Her federal badge remained clipped to her belt.
Victor would have removed it unless he wanted us to see it.
Daniel enlarged the frame.
A second badge was hidden beneath the first.
It belonged to the Treasury Department.
Ruiz was not merely an investigator.
She worked for a covert financial crimes unit tracking Victor’s network for eleven years.
Nathaniel contacted her supervisor.
He confirmed the assignment but refused further details.
Then the supervisor’s office exploded.
A gas leak, according to local reports.
No one believed that.
Ruiz had likely infiltrated Victor’s operation before approaching us.
The question was whether her real loyalty remained with the government.
Victor called me directly.
His voice came through my hospital room speaker.
“Congratulations on your daughter.”
“You will never see her.”
“I already have.”
My eyes moved toward the corners of the room.
Security swept for cameras.
None were visible.
Victor continued.
“She has Eleanor’s mouth.”
“What do you want?”
“To correct a mistake.”
“You have made thousands.”
“I allowed Nathaniel to believe he was the hero.”
Nathaniel stood beside me listening.
“You arranged the SUVs,” I said.
“Jonathan’s attempted accident became inconvenient. I needed you alive.”
“Because of the archive.”
“Because you are my daughter.”
“I do not believe you.”
“That does not change your blood.”
“Documents can be forged.”
“Then ask Eleanor what happened in Geneva.”
My mother went pale.
The call ended.
She sat slowly.
Before marrying Nathaniel, Eleanor attended a conference in Geneva.
Victor was there.
He drugged her drink.
She woke in a hotel room with no memory of several hours.
Weeks later, she learned she was pregnant.
Nathaniel assumed the children were his.
Eleanor could never be certain.
“I was ashamed,” she whispered.
“You were assaulted,” I said.
“I should have told him.”
Nathaniel knelt before her.
“You survived what my brother did. You owed me no confession.”
It was the first time she allowed him to touch her hand.
Victor had used uncertainty to separate them for thirty-one years.
He wanted it to work again.
We ordered independent DNA testing through three unrelated laboratories.
Results would take several days.
Before they arrived, Ruiz sent a hidden signal from inside the courthouse.
A Treasury tracking protocol appeared in the financial system.
She was alive and still working against Victor.
The signal included floor plans for the underground vault and a list of hostages.
Jonathan.
Vanessa.
Judge Crane.
Three clinic directors.
Two politicians.
Victor had gathered people who might testify against him.
He planned to destroy the vault after transferring the archive.
The explosion would look like an attack by Nathaniel’s security forces.
Public evidence already showed his armored vehicles at the courthouse.
Victor intended to frame his brother for terrorism.
Nathaniel’s empire would collapse.
I would become the daughter of a wanted criminal.
Amelia’s trust would enter government receivership controlled by judges Victor owned.
The plan was nearly perfect.
We needed someone Victor expected to enter.
Me.
Nathaniel refused.
“I spent three decades failing to protect you. I will not send you underground.”
“You are not sending me.”
“You gave birth four days ago.”
“And Victor expects me weak.”
“You are weak.”
The honesty angered me.
Then I understood.
He was not calling me incapable.
He was acknowledging my body had limits.
I was exhausted.
My stitches hurt.
Milk leaked through my hospital gown.
Strength did not mean pretending none of that existed.
So we built the operation around reality.
I would enter the courthouse wearing a transmitter.
Amelia would remain at a military medical facility.
A medical team would accompany me to the perimeter.
Daniel would pose as Victor’s loyal son returning with the necklace key.
Nathaniel would publicly surrender to federal authorities, supporting Victor’s false narrative long enough to distract the media.
Eleanor and Clara would release a portion of the archive to trusted journalists.
If Victor killed us, the network would still be exposed.
Before we left, the DNA results arrived.
All three laboratories agreed.
Nathaniel Cross was Daniel’s biological father.
Victor Cross was not mine.
Neither was Nathaniel.
My biological father was unidentified.
Victor had lied again.
Eleanor studied the results.
“There was only one other possibility.”
“Who?”
“A research physician at St. Agnes.”
She spoke his name.
Dr. Samuel Vale.
Her older brother.
My uncle.
The truth was unbearable.
But Eleanor shook her head before I could misunderstand.
“He donated genetic samples to the clinic. Victor may have used them without consent.”
I had not been conceived through assault.
I may have been created in a laboratory using stolen material from my mother and her own brother.
The horror was genetic as well as criminal.
Then Daniel examined the testing markers more closely.
“This report is impossible.”
“What?”
“Grace does not share enough DNA with Eleanor to be her biological daughter.”
My mother stared at me.
The woman who had recognized me.
The woman whose sister raised me.
The woman whose necklace opened my past.
Yet the laboratories said we were not biologically related.
Victor’s greatest lie had not been my father’s identity.
May you like
Eleanor was not my biological mother.
So why had she risked everything to save me?
