It was an email notification on my personal account.

The sender address was a string of random numbers, but the subject line was my mother’s name.

I clicked it open.

Inside was an attachment—a scanned copy of my mother’s bank statements from the last six months.

Every month, a transfer of ten thousand dollars had been made into her account from a company called “Vanguard Management.”

My breath caught in my throat.

Vanguard was another subsidiary of Apex.

My mother wasn’t just demanding my silence to protect her social standing.

She was on the payroll too.

I sat back in my chair, the room suddenly feeling very cold.

My entire family was bought and paid for, except for me.

And now, they were using my brother as the final piece of leverage.

I closed the laptop, my hands trembling.

I couldn’t trust my mother. I couldn’t even trust Ethan not to break under the pressure.

I had to get to Aaron and tell him we needed to move the physical evidence before the Colonel’s people found it.

I stood up and walked to the closet to get my boots.