Chapter 2 - SECRETS BENEATH THE FLOORBOARDS
The sun dipped below the horizon, painting the sky in bruised shades of violet and amber, but the winter garden remained brightly lit by overhead architectural fixtures. Leo had managed to drag Lily away after my head of security, Marcus, gently but firmly escorted them out of the main hall.
Yet, I hadn't moved an inch.
I sat alone in the center of the silent garden, my hands gripping the armrests of my wheelchair so hard my knuckles were stark white. I pulled back the heavy wool blanket. Slowly, deliberately, I focused every ounce of my willpower, every nerve ending in my body, and commanded my right foot to move again.
Nothing.
It was as dead and unresponsive as it had been yesterday.
Frustration flared in my chest, hot and bitter. Was it a cruel trick of my own mind? A muscle spasm caused by sudden laughter? Or had something inside my nervous system actually reconnected when that strange little girl looked at me?
"Marcus," I called out, my voice cutting through the quiet.
A moment later, Marcus stepped out from behind a massive imported ficus tree, his expression grim and alert. "Boss? You called?"
"Who let them in?" I demanded, my eyes fixed straight ahead. "The gates are locked with biometric scanners. The perimeter sensors cover every square inch of this property. How does an eight-year-old girl and her teenage brother waltz past armed guards and laser tripwires?"
Marcus swallowed hard, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. "We checked the security logs, Mr. Marino. The outer perimeter gate near the service alley was manually overridden from the inside. But here's the problem... the override code used was your late wife's personal birthday combination."
My heart slammed against my ribs.
Audrey’s birthday. June 14th. Only two people in the entire world had ever known that code: me, and Audrey herself. I had changed the master security protocols six months after her death, purging all old legacy codes from the system.
"Explain to me how a dead woman's birthday opens my gates," I growled, my voice dropping an octave into a dangerous register that usually made grown men beg for mercy.
"We don't know yet, sir," Marcus admitted, pulling a tablet from his jacket. "I ran background checks on the kids as soon as they were escorted off the premises. The boy is Leo Vance, sixteen. The girl is Lily Vance. They live in a rundown tenement apartment three blocks over from the East River docks—an area that your holding company recently acquired for commercial redevelopment."
I narrowed my eyes. "Redevelopment? The Harbor District project?"
"Yes, sir. The one you signed off on last month to demolish the old brick warehouses and build high-rise luxury condominiums." Marcus tapped the screen of his tablet. "Their mother, Marissa Vance, works part-time as a laundress for the estate's external vendor. But here's where it gets interesting. According to public records, Marissa's husband—the children's father—was Julian Vance. He died four years ago under... suspicious circumstances."
The name hit me like a physical blow.
Julian Vance.
Four years ago, a mid-level structural engineer named Julian Vance had been accused of embezzling half a million dollars from Whitmore Infrastructure right before the municipal bond vote. Before our corporate security could bring him in for questioning, his car had plunged off a coastal cliff in a fiery, fatal crash. The audit had been swept under the rug, the case closed by local police, and the name buried forever.
Or so I had thought.
"What does a dead embezzler's family have to do with my security gates?" I asked coldly.
"I don't know, boss," Marcus said, his eyes narrowing. "But Marissa Vance filed three separate formal appeals with the city zoning board last week, trying to halt the demolition of those warehouses. She claims the buildings aren't just commercial property—she claims there's an underground archive vault beneath them containing documents that prove her husband was framed."
I stared across the glass-domed garden, watching the moonlight filter through the panes.
A framed engineer. A dead husband. A mysterious little girl who breaks into my high-security estate using my dead wife's secret code, makes my paralyzed foot twitch, and looks at me with eyes that seem to hold ancient secrets.
"Marcus," I said quietly, a cold, calculated plan forming in my mind. "Find out when Marissa Vance's eviction notice goes into effect."
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"It's scheduled for tomorrow morning at 8:00 AM, sir."
I nodded slowly, a sharp smile touching the corners of my lips. "Good. Because tomorrow morning, the Harbor King is going to pay the Vance family a personal visit."
