The tires of the SUV screamed against the asphalt as Alexandra swung us onto the Lekki-Epe Expressway. Behind us, the headlights of Miller's tactical teams were flickering diamonds in the rearview mirror, relentless and gaining.
I gripped the back of the passenger seat, my knuckles white. "The old refinery? Alexandra, that place has been a graveyard of rusted steel for twenty years. What could my grandfather have possibly hidden there?"
"The truth, Xavier," she snapped, her eyes darting between the road and the mirror. She shifted gears with a violent grace. "Vanguard Solutions didn't just want the Vane inheritance for the money. They wanted the source. Your grandfather wasn't just a businessman; he was an architect of something much darker."
The mysterious woman in the back seat remained eerily still, her silver key glinting in the rhythmic flash of the passing streetlights. "The refinery was never meant to process oil," she whispered, her voice barely audible over the roar of the engine. "It was built to process the data—the bloodline encryption that Miller is so desperate to bypass."
A sudden thud rocked the vehicle. A black sedan had pulled alongside us, its reinforced bumper grinding against our door. Sparks showered the window like orange rain.
"They're trying to pit us!" I yelled, reaching for the side door handle as if I could somehow hold the car steady.
"Hold on!" Alexandra shouted. She didn't brake. Instead, she slammed the wheel toward the attackers, the impact jarring my teeth. For a second, the SUV felt light, almost airborne, before the heavy tires found purchase again. The black sedan spun out, careening into a concrete barrier in a plume of smoke.
But Miller wasn't done. Up ahead, the orange glow of a makeshift roadblock began to take shape.
"We're not going to make the gates," I said, the realization sinking in like lead.
"We don't need the gates," Alexandra replied, a feral grin tugging at the corner of her mouth. She veered off the paved road, the SUV plunging into the thick, overgrown brush that lined the path to the coast. "We're going through the ghost line."
As we crashed through the undergrowth, the massive, skeletal silhouette of the Epe refinery rose against the moonlit sky like a jagged crown. This wasn't just a chase anymore. It was a descent into the secrets my family had spent decades trying to bury.