Chapter 5 - THE MAN ADRIAN CALLED FAMILY
Victor Vale smiled as though he had arrived for coffee.
At seventy-one, he looked more like a retired university professor than a man capable of terrifying a room.
Silver hair.
Tailored navy coat.
Gold-rimmed glasses.
The gun changed the impression.
Adrian moved slightly in front of Nora.
Victor noticed.
“How touching.”
“Put it down,” Adrian said.
“Your father used exactly that tone.”
“Where are my guards?”
“Distracted.”
Adrian’s face remained unreadable.
“You shot Grant?”
Victor laughed.
“Grant? No.”
The answer surprised everyone.
Victor lowered the gun.
“I came because three vehicles belonging to people I don’t recognize are approaching this house.”
Adrian looked toward the window.
Victor tossed him the weapon.
“Your security has been compromised.”
Thirty seconds later, glass shattered.
Adrian dragged Nora down.
A shot struck the kitchen wall.
Diane screamed.
Chaos erupted.
Victor returned fire with a second pistol.
Adrian pulled Nora and her mother through the pantry toward the basement while his remaining security team converged.
The attack lasted four minutes.
It felt like forty.
When silence finally returned, two attackers had been captured.
The rest fled.
Victor stood in the kitchen brushing plaster dust from his coat.
Nora stared at him.
“My father warned me about you.”
Victor looked genuinely hurt.
“Thomas never liked me.”
“That doesn’t explain the warning.”
“No.”
Adrian stepped between them.
“Explain it now.”
Victor removed his glasses.
“Your mother called you ‘my boy.’ So did your father. So did I.”
He looked at Nora.
“Thomas knew the person behind Elena’s death used that phrase. He did not know which one of us it was.”
“Convenient,” Nora said.
Victor smiled faintly.
“You’re much more interesting than Adrian’s usual employees.”
“She’s not an employee anymore.”
Nora turned sharply.
“I’m not?”
Adrian ignored her.
Victor noticed everything.
“Ah.”
“There is no ‘ah,’” Nora said.
“There is definitely an ‘ah.’”
Even Adrian looked annoyed.
Good, Nora thought. At least someone else was irritating him.
The captured attackers carried no identification.
One eventually gave them a name.
Samuel Wells.
Caroline’s father.
The Chicago businessman.
Adrian frowned.
“Why would Wells attack Nora?”
The prisoner smiled through a split lip.
“Ask him yourself.”
Samuel Wells was already waiting at Vale House when they returned.
He stood beneath the chandelier with Caroline beside him.
Caroline looked furious.
Not frightened.
“My father didn’t order anything,” she said.
Samuel lifted both hands.
“I came because someone used my name.”
Adrian’s patience thinned.
“Then explain the tracker.”
Samuel looked at Caroline.
She swallowed.
“I planted it.”
Everyone stared.
“Why?” Adrian asked.
“Because I knew you’d reject me.”
Her voice shook.
“My father needs access to your eastern shipping contracts. I thought if I tracked the car after it left your property, I could learn where your private garages were.”
Samuel closed his eyes.
“Caroline.”
“I was trying to help.”
“You nearly started a war.”
Nora watched Adrian.
He wasn’t angry about the car.
He was calculating.
“If Caroline planted the tracker,” he said, “the tracker has nothing to do with my mother.”
Victor nodded.
“Two separate schemes.”
“Which means somebody used Caroline’s stupidity as cover.”
Caroline glared.
Nora almost admired her nerve.
Grant appeared from the staircase despite doctor’s orders.
He was pale but standing.
“I found something.”
Adrian looked furious.
“You should be in bed.”
“So should half the people in this room.”
Grant placed a folder on the table.
“The men who attacked me weren’t after Elena’s records.”
Nora frowned.
“What did they want?”
“This.”
He produced a torn page.
Numbers covered it.
Financial transfers.
Dates.
Names.
Adrian examined them.
“These are recent.”
“Last six months.”
Grant nodded.
“Somebody has been moving money through Vale-controlled companies.”
“How much?”
“Forty-eight million.”
Victor swore.
Nora stared at the numbers.
Then something caught her eye.
A company name.
Bennett Restoration Holdings.
She laughed once in disbelief.
“My father’s business closed six years ago.”
Grant nodded.
“Somebody reopened a corporation under a similar name eighteen months after his death.”
“Why?”
“To move money without Adrian noticing.”
Nora looked at Adrian.
“My father’s name is being used to steal from you.”
“And whoever is doing it believes the original ledger could expose the connection.”
Victor looked toward the paper from Nora’s rabbit.
“The address.”
Everyone fell silent.
The address led to an abandoned furniture workshop.
Thomas Bennett’s old shop.
Nora had not entered it since his funeral.
By evening, Adrian and Nora stood outside the dusty building.
The sign still carried her father’s faded name.
BENNETT RESTORATION.
Inside smelled of wood, oil, and memory.
Nora’s throat tightened.
Adrian did not rush her.
“My father used to let me sand chair legs.”
“You?”
“I was six.”
“I’m imagining a six-year-old you criticizing his technique.”
“He said I was bossy.”
“Smart man.”
She smiled despite herself.
They searched.
Nothing.
Then Nora noticed an unfinished cabinet against the rear wall.
Her father never left work unfinished.
She opened it.
Empty.
She knocked against the back.
Hollow.
Adrian helped remove the panel.
Behind it sat an old leather ledger.
Nora stared.
“Twenty-seven years.”
Adrian reached toward it.
“Wait.”
She pointed.
A thin wire ran beneath the book.
Adrian froze.
Security evacuated the building.
Bomb technicians arrived.
The device was primitive but deadly.
Someone had found the hiding place before them.
Someone had prepared it.
But they had made one mistake.
They assumed Nora would simply grab the ledger.
Instead, she had spent her childhood around restored furniture.
Three hours later, the bomb was disabled.
Adrian opened the ledger.
Pages of names.
Payments.
Betrayals.
And near the end, Elena had written one name repeatedly.
RICHARD VALE.
Adrian’s father.
Nora looked at him.
His face had become stone.
The evidence appeared to say the impossible.
Adrian’s father had ordered the fire that killed his own wife.
But on the final page, Thomas Bennett had added a note years later.
Richard didn’t kill Elena.
He died protecting the truth.
The murderer is still alive.
Adrian turned the page.
It had been ripped out.
Someone had removed the killer’s name.
Then Nora noticed blood on Adrian’s sleeve.
“Adrian?”
He looked down.
A red dot appeared on his chest.
Laser sight.
Nora moved before she thought.
She slammed into him.
May you like
The window exploded.
And the bullet meant for Adrian buried itself in the wall exactly where his heart had been.
