Chapter 11 - The Inheritance of CindersThe federal seals on the front doors of Vance-Sterling Holdings were still fresh when I walked into the lobby at 8:00 AM. The towering glass atrium, once humming with the frantic energy of junior analysts and sycophantic brokers, was an echoing tomb. Only the hum of emergency servers broke the silence.
Agent Vance had given me forty-eight hours to audit the physical records left behind in the executive suite before the Department of Justice took full custody of the building.
I didn't take the elevator. I walked up the marble stairs, my footsteps echoing against the glass walls.
Marcus’s office on the 41st floor was exactly as he had left it three weeks ago. A half-empty crystal decanter of scotch sat on the side table. The leather executive chair was angled toward the panoramic window overlooking Chicago. But the drawers had been ransacked by federal investigators, papers fluttering across the carpet like fallen leaves.
I walked over to the mahogany desk and knelt by the floor panel beneath the knee-hole. Marcus thought he was the only one who knew about the secondary pneumatic drop-box installed behind the wall paneling.
I pressed my thumb against the biometric latch—a legacy system left over from when I founded the firm twenty years ago—and the wood panel slid open with a soft hiss.
Inside sat a single, heavy-gauge titanium flash drive and a handwritten ledger bound in black leather.
I opened the ledger. The first page wasn’t financial data. It was a list of names, starting with my late father’s business partners, followed by a series of coded asset transfers dated back to the year I incorporated the company.
Vivienne wasn't just Marcus’s asset. She was a designated monitor planted by the original shadow board to ensure I never dug too deep into the company’s dual-purpose defense contracts.
My phone vibrated in my pocket. An encrypted text from an unknown local relay.
May you like
“You found the ledger, Adrian. But you still don’t know who signed your father’s life insurance policy.”
Before I could process the words, the overhead lights in the executive suite flickered, buzzed, and died. Total, suffocating darkness dropped over the 41st floor.
