Chapter 2 - The Ghost of 1998The heavy oak doors clicked shut behind Marcus Vance, leaving Adrien and Maya alone once more in the cavernous dining hall. The distant notes of the string quartet downstairs sounded less like music now and more like a dirge.
Adrien didn't chase after his lawyer. Instead, he reached out, picked up one of the crystal wine glasses Maya had just positioned, and turned it slowly in his long, calloused fingers.
"Federal inquiry," Adrien murmured, his voice frighteningly calm. He didn't look at her, but his shoulder muscles were bunched beneath the custom Tom Ford fabric like coiled springs. "Do you have any idea what an inquiry into the 1998 land deeds means, Maya? It means every brick my father laid, every title he cleared right before his heart gave out on that dusty lot in Queens... it’s all going under a microscope."
" History has a way of demanding receipts," Maya said quietly, taking a step back to maintain professional distance.
Adrien stopped turning the glass. He set it down—precisely on the three-finger mark—and turned his full, crushing attention onto her. "You didn't flinch when Marcus said 'federal inquiry'. You didn't look surprised. In fact, you look like a woman who’s been waiting for the other shoe to drop for five years."
"I look like an estate manager who has a hundred guests arriving in forty-five minutes, Mr. Whitmore."
"Don't play games with me," he snapped, closing the distance between them with terrifying speed. He caught her wrist before she could retreat. His grip wasn't brutal, but it was inescapable—warm, firm, and loaded with a desperate, pent-up fury. "Who are you, Maya? Because in five years, you’ve never once slipped up. You know the vintage of every bottle in the cellar, you know the security blind spots better than the head of detail, and you look at my family’s empire like a vulture circling a carcass."
Maya looked down at his hand wrapped around her wrist, then raised her eyes to meet his fierce, bloodshot gaze. She didn't pull away.
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"If I were a vulture, Adrien," she whispered, using his first name for the very first time, "you would already be dead."
Before he could process the threat, the lights in the grand dining hall flickered, buzzed violently, and plunged into absolute, pitch-black darkness.
