Chapter 4 - The Secret of Hudson Valley
The quiet inside the penthouse living room turned heavy. Dominic walked over to the sofa, sitting down beside Olivia as she pulled a small, worn leather notebook from her pocket—her father's personal diary from ten years ago.
Olivia opened the diary to a yellowed page filled with delicate blue ink.
"Read it, Olivia," Dominic requested gently.
Olivia traced her fingers over her father's handwriting, reading aloud in a clear, quiet voice:
"If my work is ever discovered, Dominic must be the one to unlock the vault. But he must watch his brother Marcus. Marcus offered to buy my energy blueprints ten years ago for five million dollars. When I refused, he threatened to make me disappear."
Dominic’s broad chest heaved as anger surged through his veins. His own brother had been secretly conspiring against William Hart for a decade.
"Where is the vault, Olivia?" Dominic asked, his sharp gray eyes fixed on the journal.
Olivia picked up the ancient leather journal from the table, flipping to the third page. She studied the golden symbols, her mind racing as her father's lessons returned to her memory.
"The symbols aren't just words, Mr. Russo," Olivia revealed, her eyes sparkling with intellectual clarity. "They are navigational coordinates. They point to an old stone estate in the Hudson Valley... your family's former summer property."
Dominic stood up immediately, his decision made. "We leave for Hudson Valley at first light."
By eight o'clock the following morning, a heavy fog rolled across the dense pine forests of the Hudson Valley. Dominic’s black SUV pulled up to the gates of an abandoned stone estate built in the 1920s. The property was quiet, overgrown with ivy, its high stone towers reaching into the gray sky.
Accompanying Dominic and Olivia was Professor Charles Whitman, whom Dominic had brought along for forensic validation.
They walked through the grand iron doors into the dusty conservatory. Floor-to-ceiling glass windows cast cool light across overgrown ferns and crumbling stone statues.
Olivia walked straight to the central stone fountain. She knelt down, inspecting a series of small, carved floral reliefs along the base. She pressed three specific carved petals in sequence—a sequence her father had taught her in a bedtime riddle years ago.
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A section of the stone floor beneath the fountain slid open smoothly, revealing a narrow spiral staircase leading down into the dark foundation below!
