THE LULLABY KEY : THE FALL
CHAPTER 19: The Moral Choice
The interrogation room was white. Bright. Sterile.
Lena had been there for six hours. No lawyer. No phone call. No water.
The door opened.
A man walked in. Not Pike. Someone older. Someone softer. Someone who looked like he hadn’t slept in days.
“Ms. Ashford. My name is Thomas Whitfield. I am the Attorney General of the United States.”
Lena stared at him. “You’re the Vice President’s brother.”
“I’m the Vice President’s older brother. And I’m here to offer you a deal.”
“I’m listening.”
“The President is willing to pardon you for all crimes related to the theft of government property—including the vault—if you agree to deactivate the kill switch and disappear. Permanently. No books. No interviews. No speaking engagements. You become a ghost.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Then you will be charged with treason. The penalty is death. And the trial will be held in secret. No press. No public. No appeals.”
Lena leaned back in her chair. “You’re offering me a choice between death and invisibility. That’s not a deal. That’s a threat.”
“It’s the best I can do.” Whitfield sat down across from her. “My brother is going to die. I know that. The President knows that. But if you release the vault, you’ll start a civil war. The country will tear itself apart. Is that what you want?”
“What I want is justice. For my father. For my mother. For the nineteen-year-old girl who disappeared because no one believed her.”
Whitfield’s face tightened. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know that your brother recorded a confession before he was taken. I know that he named the man who’s been running this country for thirty years. August Marchetti. Does that name mean anything to you?”
Whitfield went pale.
“Where did you hear that name?”
“From the Vice President. On video. Before Aegis took him.”
Whitfield stood up. He walked to the door. He opened it. He closed it. He sat down again.
“Marchetti is not a man,” he said quietly. “Marchetti is a network. A consortium of the most powerful people in the world. They don’t have names. They don’t have faces. They have money. And they have been controlling every president, every prime minister, every dictator for the last fifty years.”
Lena’s heart pounded. “And my father found proof.”
“Your father found a thread. One thread. And he pulled on it. And the whole sweater started to unravel. That’s why they killed him. That’s why they’ll kill you. Unless you walk away.”
Lena thought about the kill switch. The countdown. The millions of people who would die if she didn’t deactivate it.
“I can’t walk away,” she said. “Even if I wanted to. The kill switch is active. If I don’t deactivate it, fourteen states lose power.”
Whitfield shook his head. “Your father lied. There is no kill switch. It was a bluff. A way to keep you alive. Because as long as they thought you had the power to destroy the country, they couldn’t kill you.”
Lena’s world tilted.
“No kill switch?”
“No kill switch. Just a story. A lie. A final gift from a father who loved you more than anything.”
She closed her eyes.
For seventeen years, she had believed that her father was a coward. A man who ran. A man who hid. A man who let her mother die.
But he wasn’t a coward.
He was a strategist.
He had built a lie so big, so terrifying, that even the most powerful people in the world believed it.
And that lie had kept her alive.
“You’re wrong,” she said. “There is a kill switch. I’ve seen the code. Aris Thorne is downloading it right now.”
Whitfield’s face went white. “Aris Thorne is dead.”
“Aris Thorne is very much alive. And she’s going to help me destroy Marchetti’s network. One thread at a time.”
Whitfield stood up. “You’re making a mistake.”
“I’ve made a lot of mistakes. This isn’t one of them.”
She held out her hands.
“Either arrest me or let me go. But don’t waste my time with threats. I’ve been threatened by better men than you.”
Whitfield stared at her for a long moment.
Then he opened the door.
“Get out.”
Lena stood up. “The source code?”
“Will be delivered to you within the hour. Along with a message from my brother. The real one. The one who’s still alive.”
He handed her a folded piece of paper.
She unfolded it.
One sentence, written in shaky handwriting:
“The President’s daughter knows everything. Find her. She’ll help you.”
Lena walked out of the room, out of the building, out into the cold Montreal night.
The kill switch was a lie.
But the conspiracy was real.
And now she had a new ally.
The daughter of the man who had murdered her father.