Chapter 7 - BACK TO BLACKWOOD
Returning to Blackwood Estate under the cover of night felt like entering the lair of a sleeping beast.
The storm had passed, leaving behind a thick, bone-chilling fog that blanketed the estate grounds. The grand mansion sat dark against the treeline, its front doors boarded up with temporary plywood after the raid. Marcus had left a skeleton crew of four armed guards to patrol the perimeter, assuming Leonardo was either dead or fleeing the state.
They didn't expect us to return to the site of the ambush.
We crouched in the tree line near the glass greenhouse—the same spot where I had pulled Leonardo out of the storm cellar just twenty-four hours earlier. Leonardo was accompanied by Frank and three of his most trusted tactical operatives.
"Stay here with Frank," Leonardo instructed me, checking the magazine on his pistol.
"No," I insisted, surprising even myself with the firmness of my voice. "The server room requires a three-digit maintenance override key that changes daily. Only the house cleaning supervisors have the manual ledger code for today. Mrs. Gable keeps it hidden in the pantry inventory book. You won't find it without me."
Leonardo eyed me intensely, weighing the risk. "It's dangerous, Leora."
"I was a maid in that house for two years, Mr. Moretti," I met his gaze squarely. "I know how to slip through those halls without making a sound."
A flicker of admiration crossed his dark eyes. "Alright. But you stay directly behind me."
We moved swiftly through the storm cellar entrance, plunging back into the subterranean dark. Leonardo moved like a shadow—silent, precise, lethal. Within ten minutes, his men had quietly bypassed the perimeter guards without alerting the rest.
We reached the service pantry on the main floor. The estate was eerily quiet, smelling faintly of ozone, gunpowder, and spilled wine.
I slipped toward the rear wooden desk, opened the bottom false drawer, and pulled out the leather-bound ledger. I flipped to today's date and pointed to a handwritten sequence: 7-4-9.
"Got it," I whispered.
"Good girl," Leonardo murmured softly, taking the code.
We descended into the sub-basement server room—a heavily reinforced vault protected by a thick steel door and an electronic keypad. Leonardo punched in the sequence. The heavy lock disengaged with a solid pneumatic hiss.
Inside, rows of black server towers hummed softly in the chill, blue light. I pulled out a flash drive Frank had handed me, plugging it into the primary terminal.
"Bypassing secondary security," I murmured, typing rapidly on the keyboard. "Accessing system logs for last night at 11:30 p.m...."
The screen flashed red, then turned green.
OVERRIDE AUTHORIZED BY: USER ID #004 - MARCUS VANCE.
Below the text was an automated audio recording from the master landline, dated thirty minutes before the ambush. I hit play.
Marcus's voice echoed clearly through the small server room: "The target is on the mountain road. Shut down the automated perimeter turrets and open gate four. Make sure the maid is left inside to take the blame as an inside accessory. Leave no other survivors."
My breath hitched. He hadn't just tried to kill Leonardo—he had explicitly set me up to be executed as his scapegoat.
"I have it," I said, my hands shaking as the download finished. "It's all here. The override, the voice command, the timestamp."
"You just handed me Marcus's execution warrant," Leonardo said, his voice terrifyingly calm as he took the flash drive from the port.
Suddenly, a loud alarm began to blare throughout the sub-basement. Red emergency lights began to flash.
CRITICAL BREACH. MAIN ENTRANCE SEALED.
The heavy steel door of the server room slammed shut with a brutal bang, locking us inside.
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Over the intercom speaker, a raspy, smug voice laughed.
"Did you really think I wouldn't leave a secondary trigger on my personal server, Leonardo?" Marcus's voice echoed through the speaker. "Welcome to your tomb."
