Chapter 3 - The Trap Closes
"Victoria Vance," Marcus growled, connecting the dots instantly. "She's the head of legal. She oversees all property trust acquisitions and liquidations. If she's been forging eviction notices to clear out the old trust properties..."
"She's not just clearing them out," Nathaniel interrupted, standing up so fast his chair screeched against the floor. "She's searching for something. Something that was hidden inside the walls of 423 Elm Street twelve years ago—the night my family was supposedly destroyed."
He looked down at me, kneeling once more, his hands gripping my shoulders.
"Ruby, your mother... what is her name?"
"Clara," I answered, my voice trembling. "Clara Evans."
Nathaniel closed his eyes as if struck by a physical blow. "Clara..." He muttered something under his breath—a name, perhaps—before shaking his head. "She raised you? You're certain she's your mother?"
"She's the only mom I've ever known," I said, a defensive surge of fierce loyalty overriding my fear. "She's kind, and she works two jobs, and she cries when she thinks I'm asleep because she can't buy me shoes that don't have holes in them. She's a good person!"
"I know she is, sweetheart," Nathaniel said softly, his thumb gently wiping a smudge of dirt from my cheek. "I know she is. But Clara is keeping a secret. A secret that put a target on your back the moment Victoria's automated surveillance flagged your address for eviction."
Before I could ask what he meant, a piercing alarm shrieked through the penthouse.
Red emergency lights flashed along the ceiling.
Marcus spun toward the wall monitors displaying the security feeds from the lower floors. "Sir! We have a breach! Someone overrode the lockdown protocols from the executive legal terminal on the twentieth floor. The elevators are moving again!"
"Victoria," Nathaniel snarled, his face hardening into a mask of pure fury. "She must have had a backup terminal or a secondary override code. She knows we're onto her."
"Sir, she's heading for the ground floor exit," Marcus reported, his fingers flying across the console. "And she's not alone. She's got three armed corporate security guards with her, and—dammit—she's heading straight for the server room to wipe the digital transaction logs."
Nathaniel stood tall, his posture shifting from a grieving grandfather to the ruthless billionaire titan who ruled the state's energy sector.
"Marcus, seal the server room bulkheads. Lock down the perimeter exits completely. No one leaves this tower alive until I have Victoria Vance in handcuffs."
He looked down at me, his expression softening instantly.
"Ruby, stay right here in the vault. Don't open this door for anyone except me or Marcus. Do you understand?"
"Are you going down there?" I asked, panic gripping my chest. "Is she going to hurt you?"
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"Victoria can't hurt me anymore," Nathaniel said grimly, pulling a heavy brass key from the desk drawer and handing it to me. "She's about to find out what happens when you steal from a Graves."
With that, he and Marcus sprinted out of the vault, the heavy steel door swinging shut with a resounding clank, leaving me alone in the dark, surrounded by the ghosts of a family I never knew I belonged to.
