Chapter 17 - THE COUNTERATTACK
We did not storm the clinic blindly.
Michael had taught Luka better than that.
The coordinates contained a second hidden file.
Floor plans.
Security codes.
A list of emergency tunnels.
My father had planned for his own capture.
Marcus contacted an investigator outside Vale’s compromised chain of command.
Special Agent Naomi Price.
She had spent six years building a case against Meridian shell companies.
For the first time, we had someone inside the system we could trust.
Our plan was simple.
Luka and I would enter through the east service corridor.
Price’s team would surround the property.
Marcus would transmit Michael’s archive the moment I activated it.
My mother stayed with Sofia.
Before I left, she held my face.
“I should have told you years ago.”
“Yes.”
“I was afraid.”
“I know.”
It was not forgiveness.
Not yet.
But it was truth.
Inside the clinic, the halls smelled like antiseptic and dust.
Old patient rooms lined both sides.
Luka found Michael in a locked treatment room.
My father looked older than the man from the video.
But when he saw me, his entire face changed.
“Elena.”
I stopped.
For thirteen years, I had imagined what I would say if I could speak to my dead father again.
Now he was alive.
I crossed the room and hit him in the chest.
“You left me.”
He nodded.
Tears filled his eyes.
“I know.”
I hit him again.
Then I hugged him.
He held me exactly as he had when I was twelve.
“I’m sorry.”
I cried against him.
“You don’t get thirteen years back.”
“No.”
“You don’t get to pretend this was okay.”
“No.”
“But you’re coming home.”
His arms tightened.
“Yes.”
A voice came through the speaker above us.
“How touching.”
Vale.
The door locked.
Gas began hissing through a ceiling vent.
Luka pulled his jacket over my mouth.
Michael pointed beneath the bed.
“Emergency oxygen.”
We found three masks.
Vale’s voice continued.
“You still think this ends with my arrest.”
Michael looked at me.
“He wants the archive.”
I understood.
Vale had intentionally allowed us to reach Michael.
He needed both biometric keys in the same place.
I smiled beneath the oxygen mask.
“Then let’s give him exactly what he wants.”
Michael looked at me.
May you like
Then he smiled too.
For the first time, I saw where my stubbornness came from.
