Chapter 2 - THE DEAD WOMAN’S WARNINGRichard carried the silver key and the note into his study.
Mia and Chloe followed while the head housekeeper, Margaret Lewis, locked the doors behind them. Rain struck the tall windows, filling the room with a low, nervous rhythm.
Richard placed the note beneath his desk lamp.
“My first wife’s name was Isabel,” he said. “She died in a car accident six years ago.”
Mia studied the handwriting.
“Could someone have copied it?”
“Perhaps. But Isabel always crossed her letter R twice. She said the first line represented the past and the second represented the future.”
The letter R in Richard’s name had two distinct strokes.
Chloe glanced toward the silver key.
“What does it open?”
Richard turned it over. A small number had been engraved along the edge.
“There’s no room numbered 317 in this house.”
Margaret stepped closer.
“There used to be.”
Everyone looked at her.
Margaret had worked for the Vance family for thirty-four years. She had served Richard’s parents, cared for Richard after his mother’s death, and remained at the estate through both of his marriages.
“The west wing was renovated after Mrs. Isabel died,” she explained. “Before that, the third-floor storage rooms were numbered.”
“Was there a Room 317?” Richard asked.
Margaret nodded.
“It was your wife’s private archive.”
Richard immediately headed toward the staircase.
The west wing had been sealed for years. White sheets covered the furniture, and dust lay thick across the floorboards. At the end of the corridor, a bookcase stood where Margaret remembered the old doorway.
Richard pushed against it.
Nothing moved.
Mia noticed three tiny scratches near the bottom shelf. They resembled arrows.
She inserted the silver key into a hidden opening.
A mechanism clicked.
The bookcase swung inward.
Behind it waited a narrow room lined with metal cabinets. A desk stood at the center beneath a cracked skylight. On the desk rested an old computer, several photographs, and a wooden box.
Richard approached as if entering a grave.
A framed photograph showed Isabel beside two younger women outside the Vance Children’s Foundation. One woman was Margaret.
The other was Mia and Chloe’s mother, Elena Torres.
Mia stopped breathing.
“That’s our mother.”
Richard stared at the photograph.
“I knew her as Elena Ruiz. She was Isabel’s senior accountant.”
“Our mother never told us she worked here,” Chloe said.
“She disappeared after Isabel’s funeral,” Margaret replied. “I assumed she left the city.”
Mia’s voice shook.
“She died three years later. A delivery truck hit her car.”
Richard opened the wooden box.
Inside was a flash drive and another note.
Trust no member of the board. Elena has the ledger. If anything happens to us, protect her daughters.
Chloe gripped the edge of the desk.
“Us?”
Richard inserted the flash drive into the old computer.
A video appeared.
Isabel sat in the same archive room, her face pale and exhausted.
“If you’re watching this,” she began, “then I failed to stop them.”
Static distorted the image.
“The foundation is being used to move money through medical contractors. It is larger than charity theft. Someone is purchasing influence, judges, regulators, and hospital executives.”
Richard leaned closer.
“Who?”
Isabel looked toward the door in the recording.
A man’s voice spoke from outside the frame.
She whispered one final sentence.
“Richard must never sign the Halcyon merger.”
The video ended.
Richard stepped back.
The Halcyon merger was scheduled for the following Monday.
It would combine the Vance Foundation’s network of children’s clinics with Halcyon Medical Holdings, a corporation supported by several members of Richard’s board.
Evelyn had spent months persuading him to approve it.
Chloe picked up one of the photographs.
In the background, behind Isabel and Elena, stood a younger Evelyn.
“She knew your first wife?” Chloe asked.
Richard took the photograph from her.
Evelyn had told him they had never met.
His phone rang.
It was Marcus Hale, his attorney.
“Richard, we have a problem,” Marcus said. “Evelyn filed an emergency petition claiming you assaulted her and forced her from the estate.”
“That is false.”
“She also submitted photographs of bruises and statements from two witnesses.”
“Which witnesses?”
“Your chief financial officer and your head of security.”
Richard’s grip tightened around the phone.
Both men had worked for him for more than a decade.
Marcus continued.
“The court has temporarily frozen your personal access to several company accounts. There is also an emergency board meeting tomorrow morning.”
“For what purpose?”
“To remove you as chairman before the Halcyon vote.”
The old computer suddenly switched on by itself.
Security footage filled the screen.
The video showed Evelyn entering the archive room three nights earlier with Malcolm Price, Richard’s chief financial officer.
Evelyn placed something inside the crystal vase.
Then Malcolm turned toward the hidden camera.
“Once Richard is removed,” he said, “kill the two Torres girls.”
The recording stopped.
Behind Richard, Chloe screamed.
The archive door had slammed shut.
May you like
Smoke began curling beneath it.
Someone had set fire to the west wing.
