Chapter 7 - The Secret Vault Beneath the FloorboardsAs soon as the tail lights vanished around the corner, I dragged Lily up from the mud and rushed to the side garage door. The electronic lock was still engaged, but in his haste, Adrian had left the manual deadbolt on the garage service door unlocked from the inside before stepping out.
We slipped inside the dim garage. The air smelled faintly of gasoline and fresh cedarwood.
"Mommy, are we going inside?" Lily asked, her voice small and hesitant.
"Just for a second, sweetheart. We need proof," I said, my voice hardening into a cold, unbreakable resolve. The fear that had paralyzed me just minutes ago was entirely gone, replaced by a burning, incandescent fury. Adrian thought he had won. He thought he had outsmarted me, manipulated the system, and left us behind as smoking ruins.
He didn't know his wife nearly as well as he thought he did.
I led Lily straight into his private home office. The room was dark, the computer screen glowing with a screensaver of crashing ocean waves. I bypassed the desk and walked straight toward the heavy mahogany bookshelf on the far wall.
Adrian always kept his most important documents locked in a wall safe behind the books. But three years ago, before we got married, I had walked in on him entering the combination and memorized the sequence out of idle curiosity: Right 14, Left 32, Right 08.
I spun the dial with practiced precision.
Click.
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The heavy steel door swung open.
There were no stacks of money left behind. But sitting right on the top shelf was a thick, leather-bound ledger and a portable flash drive labeled with a single word in bold red marker: NEXUS.
