“You’re too late, Mother,” I said, the word foreign and bitter in my mouth.

I clicked.

The ledger flushed from green to a stark flashing red as the lockdown propagated through every account, portfolio, and deed tied to the Bellmont Family Trust.

Over three billion in liquidity dropped out of reach in a fraction of a second, sealed in a legal vault only my biometric key could reopen.

There was a long, suffocating silence, and then the sound of her breathing growing shallow as the automated alerts started hitting her devices.

“What did you do?” she whispered, the aristocratic composure finally cracking into the panic of a dictator who’d just lost her army.