Chapter 6 - Shadows in the Archive
The lower archive room of Hawthorne Estate was a windowless subterranean vault where decades of ledger books, weapons caches, and dark family secrets were stored behind reinforced steel doors.
When Marcus rushed into the room, he found Adrian standing beside an open metal shelving unit.
Grace Carter stood a few feet away, holding a flashlight while Adrian examined a ledger dating back to the height of the Cross-DeLuca war twelve years ago.
“What did you find?” Marcus asked, catching his breath.
Adrian held up a faded, water-damaged photograph that had slipped out from the back pages of the ledger.
Grace swallowed hard, her eyes fixed on the photograph. She had seen it ten minutes ago when Adrian asked her to help sort through old service logs.
The photo showed a young man in his early twenties wearing a sharp tuxedo, standing beside Adrian’s late father. On the young man’s wrist was a distinctive gold watch with a serpent-engraved cufflink.
Marcus stared at the face in the photograph. “Wait... is that...?”
“Julian Vance,” Adrian said, his voice terrifyingly calm. “My father’s former chief financial officer. The man who supposedly died in a warehouse fire twelve years ago.”
Marcus shook his head in disbelief. “Julian died in that fire. We identified the dental records!”
“We identified a body in that fire,” Adrian corrected, tossing the photograph onto the metal desk. “A body that Julian planted to fake his own death after he embezzled four million dollars from the syndicate and sold our shipping routes to the DeLucas.”
Grace stepped forward, her voice trembling slightly. “Mr. Cross... when my daughter talked about the man with the shiny watch in the hallway... she wasn't talking about a wedding guest.”
Adrian looked at her sharply. “Go on.”
“Before I started working here at Hawthorne Estate, I worked downtown at the Grand Continental Hotel,” Grace explained, her hands gripping her apron. “Twelve years ago. I was just a maid then too. I... I saw a man matching that description meeting with a senior DeLuca captain in a private suite the night before the warehouse fire.”
Adrian’s eyes narrowed into dark daggers. “Julian is alive. He’s been hiding inside the DeLuca inner circle under a new identity, acting as the invisible architect keeping our families at war.”
“And if the wedding went through,” Marcus realized, horror dawning on his face, “the commercial real-estate joint ventures would have exposed Julian’s shell companies. He planted the gun in Vivian’s dress to frame the DeLucas, force you to execute Vivian’s father, and ignite a full-scale war that would cover up his financial crimes.”
Adrian stood in total silence for three long seconds.
Then he reached down, picked up his suit jacket from the chair, and slipped his arms into the sleeves.
“Marcus,” Adrian said quietly.
May you like
“Yeah?”
“Get the cars ready. We’re going to pay a visit to our old friend Julian.”
