Chapter 8 - The False Clare
The video was nearly perfect.
The woman moved like me.
She wore a coat I owned.
She entered my old access code and looked directly into the camera.
Only one detail was wrong.
She opened the security door with her right hand.
I had been left-handed since childhood.
The deepfake had been created from company footage recorded during my years at NexusCore.
Matthew had preserved thousands of hours of meetings, demonstrations, and interviews.
He had used my own work to manufacture the evidence that would destroy me.
I studied the video frame by frame.
The time stamp was six years old.
The data center had changed its lighting system five years earlier.
The forged video accurately showed the old room.
Whoever created it had access to archived security footage.
Lauren named the contractor.
A former NexusCore engineer named Owen Kessler.
Owen had been reported dead after a boating accident in Maine.
No body was recovered.
Marcus traced payments to a photography studio in Jersey City.
The studio was registered under Owen’s sister’s name.
Against medical advice, I left the hospital the next morning.
My father insisted on an armored vehicle.
My mother insisted on sitting beside me.
Every bump in the road sent pain across my back, but I refused to remain hidden.
The studio appeared abandoned.
Dust covered the front windows.
Inside, we found cameras, servers, wigs, facial prosthetics, and hundreds of photographs of me.
Some were taken through restaurant windows.
Some were taken outside my gym.
Some were taken inside the penthouse.
Matthew had been surveilling me for years.
A wall displayed a timeline of my life.
My meetings.
My medical appointments.
My calls to old friends.
The dates I visited my mother’s charity website without making contact.
My father stood before the photographs with tears in his eyes.
“You were trying to come back.”
“I did not know how.”
A sound came from the back room.
Marcus drew his weapon.
Owen Kessler emerged with his hands raised.
He was alive.
Terrified.
And missing two fingers from his left hand.
“Matthew said he would kill my sister,” he told us.
Owen had created the false video.
He also created recordings used to blackmail directors, lenders, and employees.
Victor paid him through a Sterling Capital account.
My father looked sick.
Owen offered to testify if we protected his sister.
Then a red light began blinking beneath one of the desks.
“Get out,” Owen whispered.
Marcus saw the device.
“Bomb.”
We reached the sidewalk seconds before the studio exploded.
The blast threw me against the armored car.
Flames swallowed the building.
Owen was still inside.
As firefighters arrived, my phone rang.
Matthew spoke through heavy breathing.
“You should have stayed in the hospital.”
“Where are you?”
“Closer than your father thinks.”
Across the street, a man lowered a camera.
He wore a baseball cap.
Before Marcus could reach him, he disappeared into the crowd.
May you like
On the pavement where he had stood, we found a photograph.
It showed my father meeting Victor the previous night.
