“Every file, every lease, and every record of your precious family history will be gone in three seconds.”

Nathaniel didn’t flinch.

He stood perfectly still, his eyes locked on the tiny device in Arthur’s hand.

“You think I didn’t mirror the drives before we cut the main power, Arthur?” Nathaniel asked.

Arthur’s thumb hovered over the red button.

“You couldn’t have,” Arthur whispered.

“The local router was offline.”

“We didn’t use the router,” Marcus said, holding up a small black device with a blinking green antenna.

“We bypassed your local network entirely.”

“The files are already secure on our cloud.”

Arthur’s thumb trembled.

He looked at the key fob, then at the laptop screen, then at the closed glass doors behind him.

“This is a setup,” Arthur said, his voice cracking.

“You planned this.”

“No, Arthur,” Nathaniel said, taking a slow step forward.

“You planned your own ruin when you targeted my tenants.”

“And when you lied to me about where my money was going.”

“It wasn’t just the maintenance funds, was it?” I asked.

Arthur glared at me, his eyes full of hatred.