Chapter 2 - THE ROOM BENEATH THE HOUSE
Emergency lights flooded the hallway red.
Damian pushed Claire behind him as Nicholas reached inside his jacket.
“Don’t,” Damian warned.
Nicholas slowly raised both hands.
“I can explain.”
“Start.”
A gunshot exploded downstairs.
Then another.
Damian opened the bedroom door.
His security chief, Marcus Reed, ran toward them.
“Someone breached the lower level.”
“How many?”
“Unknown.”
Damian looked at Nicholas.
His brother appeared genuinely frightened now.
“Stay here,” Damian told Claire.
“No.”
“Claire.”
“The key is mine.”
“This isn’t a board meeting.”
“And I’m not your furniture.”
Even now, Damian almost admired her timing.
Marcus looked between them.
Damian surrendered.
“Stay behind me.”
They descended through the dark mansion.
Staff members were being moved into secure rooms. Guards searched corridors with flashlights.
When they reached the wine cellar, Nicholas stopped.
“There.”
Behind a wooden rack was a narrow steel door Damian had never seen.
Claire inserted Victor’s key.
The lock clicked.
Beyond it was a staircase.
Damian looked at Nicholas.
“How did you know?”
Nicholas swallowed.
“Dad showed me.”
Their father, Arthur Cross, had been dead eight years.
“Why?”
“Because he made me promise never to tell you.”
Damian’s expression turned cold.
“Congratulations. You kept one of his secrets.”
They descended.
At the bottom was a room filled with filing cabinets, photographs and old surveillance tapes.
Claire whispered, “My God.”
Damian walked to a desk.
On it sat a photograph of his mother.
Victoria Cross stood beside Arthur at a political fundraiser.
Someone had drawn a red circle around her face.
Claire opened a ledger.
Her expression changed.
“Damian.”
“What?”
“These are payments.”
“To whom?”
“Judges. Police officers. Union officials.”
Nicholas shook his head.
“That was Dad’s old system.”
Claire turned several pages.
“No. These continued after his death.”
Damian stared at his brother.
Nicholas raised his hands.
“I didn’t do this.”
Claire found recent transfers.
One had been made forty-eight hours earlier.
Damian recognized the receiving company.
Blackridge Consulting.
Marcus stepped closer.
“That’s Victor’s security contractor.”
“No,” Claire said. “It used to be.”
She examined another page.
“Ownership changed fourteen months ago.”
“To whom?”
Claire looked up.
“Evelyn Cross.”
Damian’s aunt.
The woman who had raised him after his mother died.
A sound came from the staircase.
Marcus turned.
A suppressed gunshot struck him in the shoulder.
Damian dragged Claire behind a cabinet.
Nicholas fired toward the doorway.
The attacker disappeared.
Marcus collapsed.
Claire crawled toward him.
“Pressure here.”
Damian stared at her.
“You know what you’re doing?”
“My father was a paramedic.”
Footsteps retreated upstairs.
Damian followed.
By the time he reached the cellar, no one was there.
Only a message written across the wall.
BURN THE LEDGERS.
OR BURY THE GIRL.
Damian’s blood turned cold.
Claire appeared behind him.
She read it.
“Girl means me.”
“Yes.”
“You can say it.”
Damian faced her.
“No one is burying you.”
She looked toward the hidden room.
“This is bigger than stolen money.”
Damian already knew.
Twenty-two years of secrets had been waiting underneath his house.
And someone had killed Victor to keep them hidden.
Nicholas came upstairs carrying one of the ledgers.
“Damian.”
He opened it near the final pages.
A list of names appeared beneath a heading.
CONTINGENCY ASSETS.
Damian recognized politicians, prosecutors and businessmen.
Then he saw another name.
Claire Bennett.
Beside it was a number.
$5,000,000.
Damian looked at her.
“What does that mean?”
Claire shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
Nicholas turned the page.
There was a photograph attached.
Claire at sixteen years old.
Taken outside a high school.
Damian stared at her.
Claire’s face went white.
“That’s impossible.”
“What?”
“I never met your father.”
Damian examined the photograph.
On the back, someone had written:
BENNETT GIRL — INSURANCE.
Claire whispered, “Insurance against what?”
Before Damian could answer, a telephone rang.
Victor’s phone.
Claire had taken it from the greenhouse.
She answered.
A distorted voice spoke.
“Your sister is missing.”
Claire stopped breathing.
The caller continued.
“Bring the ledger to Pier Seventeen before sunrise.”
The line disconnected.
Claire looked at Damian.
“My sister.”
Damian took the phone.
He made three calls in less than a minute.
Then he looked at Marcus.
“Lock the estate.”
Nicholas stepped forward.
“What are you doing?”
Damian checked his weapon.
“Going to the pier.”
“It’s a trap.”
“Obviously.”
Claire grabbed his arm.
“I’m coming.”
“No.”
“They want me.”
“Exactly.”
“Damian—”
He moved closer.
For the first time that night, his anger disappeared.
What remained was something far more dangerous.
Fear.
“I can survive losing money,” he said. “I can survive losing this house. I can survive losing every man who betrays me.”
His eyes held hers.
“But I will not gamble with you.”
Claire forgot what she had been about to say.
Then Nicholas interrupted.
“You may not have a choice.”
He held up the ledger.
A second photograph had fallen from between the pages.
May you like
It showed Damian’s mother standing beside Claire’s father.
And both of them were holding the same brass key.
