Beneath the Billionaire Mask - Chapter 67: Chapter 67
You are reading Beneath the Billionaire Mask, Chapter 67: Chapter 67. Read more chapters of Beneath the Billionaire Mask.
Somewhere Over the Pacific – Hermes Extraction Jet – 12:46 PM
The hum of the engines was the only comfort. Elena sat by the window, staring at the sky, but her mind was still in the burning chamber with Prime’s smile—artificial, cruel, familiar.
Across from her, Adrian reviewed satellite pings on a secure tablet. The Hermes system was compromised. Their mission wasn’t over—it had only evolved.
“You’re quiet,” he said, without looking up.
“I keep thinking about her.” Elena’s voice was low. “What she said before I pulled the trigger.”
“She wasn’t real.”
“She was programmed from me, Adrian.” Her gaze cut sharp. “She knew my weaknesses. My fears. She felt like me.”
He looked up. “But she wasn’t you.”
“No,” she whispered. “She was the mirror someone built… to break me.”
Safehouse Omega – Underground Briefing Room – 3:11 PM
Liana slammed the encrypted drive onto the table. “We intercepted the first wave of Ignis Protocol. It’s a cascade data virus targeting everyone associated with Project Blackwood. Scientists. Donors. Whistleblowers.”
Julia was already scanning it. “It doesn’t kill them physically—it erases them. Finances, identities, history. It makes them ghosts.”
“Digital assassination,” Adrian muttered. “Fast, clean, and impossible to trace.”
Elena stepped in. “And we’re on the list, right?”
Julia didn’t answer.
She just turned the screen around.
SUBJECTS MARKED:
ADRIAN BLACKWOOD
ELENA CRUZ
JULIA KING
LIANA RUIZ
“And that’s just Tier One,” Julia added. “The rest? They go after our families. Our contacts. Anyone who helped us.”
Liana paced, her jaw set. “We need a counter-strike.”
“No,” Adrian said. “We need the source. Whoever activated the protocol… we end them.”
Meanwhile – London, UK – 6:09 PM (Local Time)
A woman in a navy trench coat strode through the vault beneath the old Montclaire Bank, passing biometric locks with a wave of her hand. Her face was obscured—but her presence turned guards to shadows.
She reached a private server room. Dozens of files loaded across a central screen.
One folder blinked red: IGNIS LIVE – GLOBAL WIPE: PHASE TWO
The masked woman removed her glove and pressed her hand to the scanner.
Authorization granted.
Then she whispered, “Time to turn their revolution into ash.”
Back at Omega – 8:42 PM
Elena stared at a screen filled with cascading names all marked for deletion.
She found one.
G. CRUZ STATUS: ERASED
Her breath hitched.
“My father,” she whispered. “They wiped him. His digital footprint. Everything.”
Adrian stepped behind her, hands resting lightly on her shoulders.
“We’re going to get it back. All of it.”
Her voice was quiet. “What if we can’t?”
Adrian met her eyes. “Then we burn them down.”
Last Scene – Encrypted Transmission – Unknown Time
The screen flickered in static, then resolved into the same masked woman.
“Target behavior is erratic,” she said, voice calm.
“Subject ELENA CRUZ is emotionally unstable. Subject ADRIAN BLACKWOOD is compromised.”
“They’ve begun rebuilding the Black Archive.”
She turned.
In the shadows, a taller figure stepped forward.
And removed his mask.
Marcus Vale. Alive.
“They want war?” he said.
“We’ll give them extinction.”
Safehouse Omega – Adrian’s Private Room – 10:03 PM
The room was dim, lit only by a flickering desk lamp and the glow of Adrian’s laptop. He sat with one hand wrapped around a glass of untouched scotch, the other scrolling through a confidential dossier Julia had decrypted.
Dozens of images. Names. Places.
Every one of them once connected to him. Now, they were marked as “ERASED.”
Elena stood in the doorway, arms crossed. She looked different—not broken, but sharpened. Hardened by the past week.
“You okay?” she asked, voice low.
“No.” Adrian didn’t look up. “They’re scrubbing every piece of me. Not just me—my legacy. The school I rebuilt in Cape Verde. The clean water initiative in Maharashtra. Even the refugee centers…”
“They’re erasing your redemption.”
“No,” he said, standing slowly. “They’re trying to make me a monster again. One no one remembers saving a soul.”
She stepped closer. “Then let’s make them remember the opposite.”
He met her gaze.
“You still believe in that version of me?”
Elena nodded. “I believe in the man who bled for people he didn’t owe. Who took in a shattered journalist and never asked her to stay quiet.”
Adrian smiled faintly. “Then let’s make some noise.”
Julia’s Terminal – Control Room – 11:37 PM
“The virus has nodes in seven countries,” Julia reported, fingers flying across the keyboard. “But there’s a central relay hub in London. That’s where it was triggered.”
“Montclaire Bank,” Liana muttered. “Of course. Half the world’s invisible money passes through that place.”
Elena leaned in. “And if we shut down the hub?”
“We delay the next purge. Maybe stall the erasures. But we won’t stop the Ignis Protocol without the kill code.”
“And where’s that?”
Julia hesitated.
Then, carefully: “Marcus Vale.”
The room fell into silence.
“No body was ever recovered,” Adrian said slowly. “And now… we know why.”
Somewhere in Europe – 12:08 AM
Marcus Vale watched a digital globe spin slowly on a projection screen. Each red dot was a human life he was erasing in real-time.
Behind him, a woman adjusted a memory drive marked: PHOENIX LOCK – ACTIVE.
“Blackwood will move soon,” she said. “He’s too sentimental to let this burn.”
Marcus smiled faintly. “Good. That means he’ll come to me.”
“Why not just finish him now?”
Marcus turned, eyes glowing with cold resolve.
“Because I want him to see it. The world forgetting him.”
Safehouse Omega – Rooftop – 12:22 AM
Elena stood against the cool wind, staring into the dark, starless sky.
Adrian joined her, silent for a moment. Then—
“If we don’t make it out of this…”
“We will.”
“But if we don’t,” he continued, “you should know… I would’ve given it all up. The money. The legacy. Just to have one life where I didn’t wear the mask.”
She turned to him.
“You still have time to take it off.”
His eyes searched hers.
“I think you already see me without it.”
They stood in silence. Then, together, they turned to the door.
Tomorrow, they would fly to London.
Not for justice.
Not even for revenge.
But for something deeper.
To make the world remember.
Montclaire Bank – Vault Surveillance Room – 3:03 AM (London Time)
The masked woman—code-named Nox—stood before the interface screen as lines of code flickered across multiple monitors. Ghost trails of erased lives danced in silence, a tapestry of destruction woven in real time.
Behind her, Marcus Vale finished securing a biometric thumb drive to a steel briefcase lined with military-grade encryption.
“Phase Three?” she asked without looking back.
Marcus nodded. “Set. By sunrise, there’ll be no trace of Blackwood’s existence in any digital record. We’ve already ghosted his mother’s grave. His foundation’s board. Even his blood type.”
Nox turned. “You’re wiping his entire life.”
“No.” Marcus’s eyes glinted. “I’m liberating him from it.”
She tilted her head. “You still care.”
“I care about closure.”
Omega Safehouse Armory Bay 4:12 AM
Elena zipped up her tactical vest, checking the sidearm Adrian handed her. Their silence was heavier than usual not cold, but filled with unspoken weight.
Adrian finished loading rounds into his mag. “You still sure about going in?”
She looked at him. “You once told me I had to stop running from fire.”
“I also told you I plan everything.”
“And you didn’t plan me.”
He smiled grimly. “Exactly.”
Julia entered, holding a satellite phone. “The Montclaire grid flickered. We’ve got 45 minutes before they enter their hourly data sync. That’s our window.”
Elena slipped the last knife into her boot. “Then we don’t waste it.”
Liana strode in next, carrying the encrypted map of the vault’s subterranean tunnels. “We’re either ghosts or legends after this.”
“Let’s make sure we haunt them properly,” Adrian muttered.
Omega Jet – Wheels Up – 5:00 AM
As the aircraft accelerated down the tarmac, the team sat in steely focus.
Elena glanced at the encrypted tablet in her lap—images of her “other self,” the one they terminated. The memory was still raw.
But this time, there would be no hesitation. No questions about which Elena mattered. No doubt about the mask Adrian wore—or had chosen to finally take off.
“This ends tonight,” she whispered.
Adrian leaned back, staring into the clouds outside.
“Not ends,” he murmured. “Begins.”
Unknown Node – 5:43 AM
Somewhere in the shadows of the Montclaire server bank, a hidden protocol blinked to life:
PHOENIX LOCK: STAGE FOUR ENGAGED
IDENTITY WIPES: IN PROGRESS
TARGET REASSIGNMENTS: LIVE
And beneath it all, a final message encoded deep in the Ignis stream:
“When the last truth is gone, what’s left isn’t silence. It’s the scream that never got heard.”
A digital seed pulsed quietly in the code.
Waiting to be activated.
High Altitude – En Route to London – 6:17 AM
The jet was quiet except for the low hum of engines and the occasional beeping from encrypted comms. Adrian stood alone at the far end of the cabin, staring out the window, his reflection staring back—pale, drawn, and exhausted.
Elena approached, softly, with a tablet in hand.
“We’ve got a problem,” she said.
Adrian turned, catching the flicker of uncertainty in her eyes.
“They didn’t just delete your name from the Black Archive,” she said. “They rewrote it.”
He blinked. “What do you mean?”
“I mean they replaced you—with a digital phantom. Someone with your face, your financial records, your foundation’s trail… but none of your choices. In every file, he is the one who built the empire, but also the one who burned it down.”
Adrian’s blood chilled. “They made me the villain.”
“No,” Elena whispered, “they made you a weapon. A scapegoat.”
She handed him the tablet. His name flashed on screen Adrian Cross Blackwood under a fabricated operation called Project Eris.
His photo was stamped across classified documents. But the timeline was falsified. The motives twisted. The charities labeled as cover fronts for espionage. Even his orphanage was listed as a recruitment center for covert operatives.
It was a masterpiece of calculated ruin.
He sat slowly, hands trembling.
“They’re rewriting you from the inside out,” he murmured.
“And if we don’t stop it,” she added, “they’ll overwrite everything good you ever did.”
Montclaire Bank – Vault Depths – Same Time
Marcus Vale stood in a cylindrical white chamber lined with biometric scanners. His voice was calm as he issued a command into a black terminal:
“Activate full inheritance protocol. Let the system believe he did it all. Every fire. Every fall.”
The A.I. confirmed:
INHERITANCE STREAM LIVE
BLACKWOOD IDENTITY CORRUPTED CLONE REGISTERED
LEGACY INDEX OVERRIDDEN
Marcus stepped back.
“He wanted to wear the mask,” he said to no one. “Now he gets to choke on it.”
Omega Jet – Minutes Later
Adrian looked up at Elena, a quiet horror in his voice. “If they finish this rewrite, the world will forget who I am. And worse—remember me wrong.”
Elena knelt beside him. “Then we rewrite it back. With blood, if we have to.”
He caught her wrist gently. “You don’t owe me this war.”
“I didn’t come for you,” she said. “I came for the truth. But somewhere along the way, I realized… you were part of it.”
She leaned in. “And now I’m staying for you.”
Adrian’s chest ached. Not from fear. But from a feeling he thought he buried with his name.
Hope.
The hum of the engines was the only comfort. Elena sat by the window, staring at the sky, but her mind was still in the burning chamber with Prime’s smile—artificial, cruel, familiar.
Across from her, Adrian reviewed satellite pings on a secure tablet. The Hermes system was compromised. Their mission wasn’t over—it had only evolved.
“You’re quiet,” he said, without looking up.
“I keep thinking about her.” Elena’s voice was low. “What she said before I pulled the trigger.”
“She wasn’t real.”
“She was programmed from me, Adrian.” Her gaze cut sharp. “She knew my weaknesses. My fears. She felt like me.”
He looked up. “But she wasn’t you.”
“No,” she whispered. “She was the mirror someone built… to break me.”
Safehouse Omega – Underground Briefing Room – 3:11 PM
Liana slammed the encrypted drive onto the table. “We intercepted the first wave of Ignis Protocol. It’s a cascade data virus targeting everyone associated with Project Blackwood. Scientists. Donors. Whistleblowers.”
Julia was already scanning it. “It doesn’t kill them physically—it erases them. Finances, identities, history. It makes them ghosts.”
“Digital assassination,” Adrian muttered. “Fast, clean, and impossible to trace.”
Elena stepped in. “And we’re on the list, right?”
Julia didn’t answer.
She just turned the screen around.
SUBJECTS MARKED:
ADRIAN BLACKWOOD
ELENA CRUZ
JULIA KING
LIANA RUIZ
“And that’s just Tier One,” Julia added. “The rest? They go after our families. Our contacts. Anyone who helped us.”
Liana paced, her jaw set. “We need a counter-strike.”
“No,” Adrian said. “We need the source. Whoever activated the protocol… we end them.”
Meanwhile – London, UK – 6:09 PM (Local Time)
A woman in a navy trench coat strode through the vault beneath the old Montclaire Bank, passing biometric locks with a wave of her hand. Her face was obscured—but her presence turned guards to shadows.
She reached a private server room. Dozens of files loaded across a central screen.
One folder blinked red: IGNIS LIVE – GLOBAL WIPE: PHASE TWO
The masked woman removed her glove and pressed her hand to the scanner.
Authorization granted.
Then she whispered, “Time to turn their revolution into ash.”
Back at Omega – 8:42 PM
Elena stared at a screen filled with cascading names all marked for deletion.
She found one.
G. CRUZ STATUS: ERASED
Her breath hitched.
“My father,” she whispered. “They wiped him. His digital footprint. Everything.”
Adrian stepped behind her, hands resting lightly on her shoulders.
“We’re going to get it back. All of it.”
Her voice was quiet. “What if we can’t?”
Adrian met her eyes. “Then we burn them down.”
Last Scene – Encrypted Transmission – Unknown Time
The screen flickered in static, then resolved into the same masked woman.
“Target behavior is erratic,” she said, voice calm.
“Subject ELENA CRUZ is emotionally unstable. Subject ADRIAN BLACKWOOD is compromised.”
“They’ve begun rebuilding the Black Archive.”
She turned.
In the shadows, a taller figure stepped forward.
And removed his mask.
Marcus Vale. Alive.
“They want war?” he said.
“We’ll give them extinction.”
Safehouse Omega – Adrian’s Private Room – 10:03 PM
The room was dim, lit only by a flickering desk lamp and the glow of Adrian’s laptop. He sat with one hand wrapped around a glass of untouched scotch, the other scrolling through a confidential dossier Julia had decrypted.
Dozens of images. Names. Places.
Every one of them once connected to him. Now, they were marked as “ERASED.”
Elena stood in the doorway, arms crossed. She looked different—not broken, but sharpened. Hardened by the past week.
“You okay?” she asked, voice low.
“No.” Adrian didn’t look up. “They’re scrubbing every piece of me. Not just me—my legacy. The school I rebuilt in Cape Verde. The clean water initiative in Maharashtra. Even the refugee centers…”
“They’re erasing your redemption.”
“No,” he said, standing slowly. “They’re trying to make me a monster again. One no one remembers saving a soul.”
She stepped closer. “Then let’s make them remember the opposite.”
He met her gaze.
“You still believe in that version of me?”
Elena nodded. “I believe in the man who bled for people he didn’t owe. Who took in a shattered journalist and never asked her to stay quiet.”
Adrian smiled faintly. “Then let’s make some noise.”
Julia’s Terminal – Control Room – 11:37 PM
“The virus has nodes in seven countries,” Julia reported, fingers flying across the keyboard. “But there’s a central relay hub in London. That’s where it was triggered.”
“Montclaire Bank,” Liana muttered. “Of course. Half the world’s invisible money passes through that place.”
Elena leaned in. “And if we shut down the hub?”
“We delay the next purge. Maybe stall the erasures. But we won’t stop the Ignis Protocol without the kill code.”
“And where’s that?”
Julia hesitated.
Then, carefully: “Marcus Vale.”
The room fell into silence.
“No body was ever recovered,” Adrian said slowly. “And now… we know why.”
Somewhere in Europe – 12:08 AM
Marcus Vale watched a digital globe spin slowly on a projection screen. Each red dot was a human life he was erasing in real-time.
Behind him, a woman adjusted a memory drive marked: PHOENIX LOCK – ACTIVE.
“Blackwood will move soon,” she said. “He’s too sentimental to let this burn.”
Marcus smiled faintly. “Good. That means he’ll come to me.”
“Why not just finish him now?”
Marcus turned, eyes glowing with cold resolve.
“Because I want him to see it. The world forgetting him.”
Safehouse Omega – Rooftop – 12:22 AM
Elena stood against the cool wind, staring into the dark, starless sky.
Adrian joined her, silent for a moment. Then—
“If we don’t make it out of this…”
“We will.”
“But if we don’t,” he continued, “you should know… I would’ve given it all up. The money. The legacy. Just to have one life where I didn’t wear the mask.”
She turned to him.
“You still have time to take it off.”
His eyes searched hers.
“I think you already see me without it.”
They stood in silence. Then, together, they turned to the door.
Tomorrow, they would fly to London.
Not for justice.
Not even for revenge.
But for something deeper.
To make the world remember.
Montclaire Bank – Vault Surveillance Room – 3:03 AM (London Time)
The masked woman—code-named Nox—stood before the interface screen as lines of code flickered across multiple monitors. Ghost trails of erased lives danced in silence, a tapestry of destruction woven in real time.
Behind her, Marcus Vale finished securing a biometric thumb drive to a steel briefcase lined with military-grade encryption.
“Phase Three?” she asked without looking back.
Marcus nodded. “Set. By sunrise, there’ll be no trace of Blackwood’s existence in any digital record. We’ve already ghosted his mother’s grave. His foundation’s board. Even his blood type.”
Nox turned. “You’re wiping his entire life.”
“No.” Marcus’s eyes glinted. “I’m liberating him from it.”
She tilted her head. “You still care.”
“I care about closure.”
Omega Safehouse Armory Bay 4:12 AM
Elena zipped up her tactical vest, checking the sidearm Adrian handed her. Their silence was heavier than usual not cold, but filled with unspoken weight.
Adrian finished loading rounds into his mag. “You still sure about going in?”
She looked at him. “You once told me I had to stop running from fire.”
“I also told you I plan everything.”
“And you didn’t plan me.”
He smiled grimly. “Exactly.”
Julia entered, holding a satellite phone. “The Montclaire grid flickered. We’ve got 45 minutes before they enter their hourly data sync. That’s our window.”
Elena slipped the last knife into her boot. “Then we don’t waste it.”
Liana strode in next, carrying the encrypted map of the vault’s subterranean tunnels. “We’re either ghosts or legends after this.”
“Let’s make sure we haunt them properly,” Adrian muttered.
Omega Jet – Wheels Up – 5:00 AM
As the aircraft accelerated down the tarmac, the team sat in steely focus.
Elena glanced at the encrypted tablet in her lap—images of her “other self,” the one they terminated. The memory was still raw.
But this time, there would be no hesitation. No questions about which Elena mattered. No doubt about the mask Adrian wore—or had chosen to finally take off.
“This ends tonight,” she whispered.
Adrian leaned back, staring into the clouds outside.
“Not ends,” he murmured. “Begins.”
Unknown Node – 5:43 AM
Somewhere in the shadows of the Montclaire server bank, a hidden protocol blinked to life:
PHOENIX LOCK: STAGE FOUR ENGAGED
IDENTITY WIPES: IN PROGRESS
TARGET REASSIGNMENTS: LIVE
And beneath it all, a final message encoded deep in the Ignis stream:
“When the last truth is gone, what’s left isn’t silence. It’s the scream that never got heard.”
A digital seed pulsed quietly in the code.
Waiting to be activated.
High Altitude – En Route to London – 6:17 AM
The jet was quiet except for the low hum of engines and the occasional beeping from encrypted comms. Adrian stood alone at the far end of the cabin, staring out the window, his reflection staring back—pale, drawn, and exhausted.
Elena approached, softly, with a tablet in hand.
“We’ve got a problem,” she said.
Adrian turned, catching the flicker of uncertainty in her eyes.
“They didn’t just delete your name from the Black Archive,” she said. “They rewrote it.”
He blinked. “What do you mean?”
“I mean they replaced you—with a digital phantom. Someone with your face, your financial records, your foundation’s trail… but none of your choices. In every file, he is the one who built the empire, but also the one who burned it down.”
Adrian’s blood chilled. “They made me the villain.”
“No,” Elena whispered, “they made you a weapon. A scapegoat.”
She handed him the tablet. His name flashed on screen Adrian Cross Blackwood under a fabricated operation called Project Eris.
His photo was stamped across classified documents. But the timeline was falsified. The motives twisted. The charities labeled as cover fronts for espionage. Even his orphanage was listed as a recruitment center for covert operatives.
It was a masterpiece of calculated ruin.
He sat slowly, hands trembling.
“They’re rewriting you from the inside out,” he murmured.
“And if we don’t stop it,” she added, “they’ll overwrite everything good you ever did.”
Montclaire Bank – Vault Depths – Same Time
Marcus Vale stood in a cylindrical white chamber lined with biometric scanners. His voice was calm as he issued a command into a black terminal:
“Activate full inheritance protocol. Let the system believe he did it all. Every fire. Every fall.”
The A.I. confirmed:
INHERITANCE STREAM LIVE
BLACKWOOD IDENTITY CORRUPTED CLONE REGISTERED
LEGACY INDEX OVERRIDDEN
Marcus stepped back.
“He wanted to wear the mask,” he said to no one. “Now he gets to choke on it.”
Omega Jet – Minutes Later
Adrian looked up at Elena, a quiet horror in his voice. “If they finish this rewrite, the world will forget who I am. And worse—remember me wrong.”
Elena knelt beside him. “Then we rewrite it back. With blood, if we have to.”
He caught her wrist gently. “You don’t owe me this war.”
“I didn’t come for you,” she said. “I came for the truth. But somewhere along the way, I realized… you were part of it.”
She leaned in. “And now I’m staying for you.”
Adrian’s chest ached. Not from fear. But from a feeling he thought he buried with his name.
Hope.
End of Beneath the Billionaire Mask Chapter 67. Continue reading Chapter 68 or return to Beneath the Billionaire Mask book page.