He was eighteen. Julian frequently dismissed him as “defective” because Leo preferred algorithmic financial modeling to fraternity parties, writing complex code the way other teenagers fired off text messages.
Leo didn’t offer a greeting. He walked straight to the marble coffee table, setting down a military-grade encrypted tablet. Beside it, he placed a single, hand-carved black wooden chess queen.
“Mom,” Leo said, his voice a low, steady hum. “They are approaching the main stage. We have a fourteen-minute window before the keynote. It is time to open the vault.”
I crossed the room to the imposing oil painting mounted above the fireplace—a tempestuous maritime landscape my father had commissioned. Hidden behind the ornate gilded frame was a flush biometric pressure plate. Julian, in all his arrogant assumptions of ownership, had never bothered to inspect the walls of a house he believed he had already conquered.
