Inheritance ✔

Chapter 15 - Extraction

Laurier Ashford's POV

The warehouse smelled like old paper, rust, and fear.

We'd been standing in the center of it for twenty minutes—just me, Renzo, and two members of his extraction team—surrounded by crates labeled under fake export names. Clara had set this up well: the perfect place to disappear into, the kind of hideout you only find when you already know exactly where to look.

But she wasn't here.

Not anymore.

And that meant we were too late.

Renzo moved like a man on a mission, checking every exit, every door, and every security device wired into the place. There weren't many—but there didn't need to be. Clara hadn't set up this safehouse to protect herself.

She'd set it up to transfer something.

And judging by the open laptop on the table—still warm, still blinking from a rushed file transfer—she already had.

"Hard drives are gone," Renzo muttered. "Encrypted data lockers too. This laptop was used as an upload node."

"To where?"

He turned the screen to me. A VPN-masked cloud drive. Server origin: unknown. Destination: unknown.

"What was on the drive?" he asked, even though he probably already knew.

I stared at the dark monitor, jaw tight.

"Everything."

Fifteen minutes later, we were back in the car.

I sat in the front passenger seat this time, legs crossed, hands gripping the armrest hard enough to turn my knuckles pale. Rain tapped at the windshield as Renzo turned the ignition, silence thick between us.

"Why now?" I finally said. "She could've run months ago. Years, even."

"She was waiting for something," Renzo replied, eyes on the road.

"What?"

"I don't know."

His voice was tight. Controlled. He hated not knowing.

Just like I did.

"She took Midas," I said. "That's the only file in there that hasn't been seen by outside eyes."

Renzo's jaw clenched. "You think Dagon knew about it?"

"No." I shook my head slowly. "But I think Clara told him."

"And now he knows more than he should."

We didn't speak again until we arrived at the private intel facility owned by one of my father's oldest allies—General Villareal, retired, but with enough favors owed to let us operate without official clearance.

The moment we stepped inside, his men swept the room for bugs and prying ears. Renzo handed over the extracted laptop and requested an immediate scan for breadcrumbs—digital fingerprints that could show us who Clara had sent the data to.

I sat in the corner, arms folded tightly, staring down the clock on the wall.

4:17 p.m.

Rain still hadn't stopped.

An hour later, we had our first lead.

"She used a bouncing relay system," said Mateo, the lead tech. "But we were able to isolate a ping."

"Where?" Renzo asked.

Mateo hesitated. "That's the weird part. It bounced around Southeast Asia, but it landed—and stayed—on a static terminal located in Marbella Estate, Cavite."

I frowned. "Residential?"

"Yes," Mateo confirmed. "Old private mansion, currently off-grid. No power records, no telecom bills. But someone lives there."

Renzo didn't wait.

"Prep the team," he said. "We're going."

The drive was long and tense. Night had started to fall by the time we reached the edge of the estate. We parked the car down the road and approached on foot, dressed in black, concealed by the overgrown foliage that had long overtaken the fence line.

Renzo signaled to the two men behind us, then held up a fist—stop.

From our angle, we could see a faint orange glow through a ground floor window. Candlelight. A flickering screen.

And the silhouette of a woman pacing.

I didn't need a second look.

It was Clara.

I almost moved.

Renzo stopped me with a hand on my wrist.

"Let me go first."

I shook my head. "I'm not watching this from the sidelines."

"She might have a gun."

"Then I'll shoot first."

Renzo gave me a tight look—something between pride and frustration—then nodded once. We moved in together.

The old mansion creaked beneath our boots.

No alarms.

No traps.

No cameras.

Just Clara.

She was standing in the living room, a makeshift setup of open files, candlelight, and three phones laid out neatly beside her.

She turned when she heard us.

Didn't flinch.

Didn't scream.

Just stared at us like we were ghosts.

"Hello, Laurier," she said.

I didn't return the greeting. "Why?"

Clara blinked. "Because you lied to me."

"What?"

"You lied. About your father. About what you've done. You built an empire of blood and ash, and you made me clean the paperwork."

I stepped closer. "You think I had a choice?"

"You had choices every day," she spat. "And you chose to keep playing queen in a kingdom of criminals. I just decided to play smarter."

"By giving our secrets to Dagon?"

"I didn't know what he'd do with them!"

"Then you're a fool."

Her hands were trembling. But her face was calm. Too calm.

Renzo's voice cut through the tension. "Who else has the files?"

She didn't answer.

He stepped forward, gun low but not hidden.

"Clara. Who. Else."

Her mouth opened—then snapped shut.

A second too late.

That's when I knew.

"Someone else has them already," I whispered.

She looked at me with something almost like pity. "It's bigger than Dagon now."

"What did you do?"

"I traded the files," she said quietly. "Dagon wanted power. But someone else wanted leverage. I gave them both."

"Who?"

She didn't answer.

She didn't have to.

Renzo's phone buzzed in his pocket. He checked it.

And his face changed.

"What?" I asked.

His voice was ice.

"They just published Midas."