Chapter 7 - The Descent to the VaultsThe red emergency strobe lights painted the corridors of Alderwyn Estate in dramatic, bloody shades of crimson and shadow.
Julian, Nora, and Arthur sprinted down the grand sweeping staircase—the very staircase where Helena Hawthorne had supposedly fallen to her death eighteen years ago. The two hundred elite guests below had been evacuated into the subterranean panic bunkers by automated security protocols, leaving the main hall completely deserted save for the echoing wail of the sirens.
“Where are we going?” Arthur wheezed, clutching his side as his elderly legs struggled to keep pace with Julian’s athletic strides.
“The lower archives,” Julian said over his shoulder, his eyes fixed on the heavy steel reinforced door at the end of the lower hallway—a door most members of the Hawthorne family didn't even know existed. “That’s where my father kept the physical backups of the offshore accounts before he died.”
Nora kept pace right beside him, her hand tightly gripping the antique locket tucked safely inside her sweater. “Your father didn't just keep financial backups down there, Julian. He kept the original investigation files on my father’s trial. The signed confessions from the judges he bribed.”
They reached the heavy vault door. Julian slapped his palm against the biometric scanner, followed by a retinal scan. The red light flashed yellow, then green.
HISS.
The massive steel wheel spun itself open, revealing a dark, temperature-controlled subterranean room lined with rows of filing cabinets and digital server racks humming quietly in the gloom.
As they stepped inside, the heavy steel door slammed shut behind them automatically, cutting off the sound of the sirens outside.
“We’re safe here,” Arthur breathed, collapsing into a metal chair near one of the desks. “The vault is impervious to EMPs, explosives, and outside hacking. Nothing gets in unless we open it from the inside.”
“Except for the air supply,” a cold voice echoed from the dark shadows at the back of the vault.
Julian froze. Nora’s hand instantly went to her neck, gripping the locket as a tall, imposing figure stepped out from behind the server racks.
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It was Marcus Prescott—Harrison’s older brother, the patriarch of the Prescott family, a man long believed to have retired to a private island in the Mediterranean. He held a silenced pistol pointed directly at Arthur’s head.
“Hello, Julian,” Marcus said, a sickeningly polite smile curving his wrinkled lips. “You really are your father’s son—painfully curious, and ultimately, deeply destructive.”
