Chapter 19 - The Concrete FortressThe retaliation was faster and much more physical than I anticipated.
While my code was actively tearing down his digital barricades, Marcus realized his extortion attempt was evaporating. In a panicked, desperate move, he called in the local muscle he had hired with his initial stolen funds.
I was watching the terminal successfully recover the first of the three Facebook pages when my phone vibrated. It was a high-priority alert from the estate's perimeter security system.
I pulled up the security camera feeds. Two black, unmarked vans had just violently rammed through the front gates of my property. Half a dozen men poured out, carrying heavy crowbars and shattered the exterior lamps. They were moving fast, heading straight for the front doors.
My heart hammered against my ribs, but the panic didn't paralyze me; it sharpened my focus.
I hit the estate lockdown protocol. Heavy, reinforced steel shutters slammed down over the first-floor windows.
The men reached the front door, slamming a heavy steel battering ram against the wood. The sound echoed through the house like a cannon shot.
But I had built this house to survive a siege. The foundation wasn't standard residential concrete. It was a massive, deep raft foundation, poured with industrial-grade Mac 250 concrete—engineered to withstand extreme seismic activity and immense physical pressure. The walls were reinforced with steel rebar. They could beat on that door all night; they were trying to break into a bank vault with a hammer.
I grabbed my encrypted phone and dialed Harper, who had rushed Leo into the fortified panic room on the second floor.
"Are you secure?" I demanded, watching the thugs desperately try to pry open the steel window shutters on my monitor.
"We're safe," Harper's voice was remarkably steady. "The inner doors are locked. Leo thinks we're playing a spaceship game. What is happening, Evelyn?"
"Marcus sent thugs to intimidate me into stopping the script," I replied, a dark, venomous smile spreading across my face in the glow of the monitors. "He thinks physical violence overrides digital supremacy."
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I patched the security camera feeds through the FFmpeg stream processor, recording every single face, license plate, and weapon in ultra-high definition. I routed the live feed directly to the federal cyber-crimes unit, attaching Marcus's name, his offshore routing numbers, and the GPS coordinates of my estate.
"Hold tight, Harper," I said softly. "The cavalry is already on the way. And I am about to end this."
