Chapter 6 - THE SECOND STRIKERyan opened the front door to find Arthur Pendelton standing on the porch, drenched in rain, holding a thick leather briefcase.
“Ryan, we have an emergency,” Arthur said, breathing heavily as he pushed past Ryan into the foyer.
“If this is about my mother’s bail, I don't care—”
“It’s not about your mother!” Arthur interrupted, shutting the door behind him. “Evelyn isn't in custody!”
Ryan’s eyes widened. “What do you mean? I saw the police take her out of the boardroom!”
“The officers who arrested her weren't real police,” Arthur said, his hands shaking as he opened his briefcase. “They were mercenaries hired by Vanguard Security—a private military firm your mother has retained for two decades. They faked the arrest to extract her from the building before the actual police warrant arrived. She’s gone underground.”
Maya walked into the hallway, her face pale. “Where is she?”
“She’s finalizing what she started,” Arthur said, pulling out a tablet. “Evelyn has triggered a scorched-earth clause in the family estate. She is liquidating all Whitmore assets and transferring them to a shell company in Panama. But to complete the transfer, she needs the physical security key that your father hid inside the family vault at the lake house.”
Arthur looked Ryan dead in the eye. “And she just dispatched a team to your lake house to retrieve it. If she gets that key, she will wipe out your fortune, seize control of the trust, and leave you and Oliver with nothing—and then she will upload a corrupted version of your father’s files to frame Maya for her father’s death.”
Ryan’s mind raced. The lake house in Upstate New York—the isolated estate where he had spent his childhood summers.
“Where is Oliver?” Maya suddenly gasped, turning toward the stairs.
A sudden, ominous silence hung over the upper floor.
Ryan bolted up the stairs two at a time, throwing open the door to the nursery.
The private nurse was lying unconscious on the floor next to the crib.
The crib was empty.
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A small blue blanket lay twisted on the floor, and pinned to the mattress was a handwritten note in elegant, unmistakable cursive:
“Bring the ledger to the Lake House alone, Ryan. Or Oliver never takes another breath.”
