Chapter 3 - THE LOCKED ROOM
"No one has the key to the third floor," Damian said, his voice dropping into a lethal register. "I threw it into the harbor myself."
Marco pulled a slim metal tool from his pocket. "Whoever looped the feed didn't use a key, Boss. They used an active biometric bypass. Recorded directly off your thumbprint."
Mara felt her blood run cold. She took a step back, her fingers tightly clutching Lila's hand. "We should leave. Mr. Volkov, please—my daughter and I have nothing to do with this."
Damian didn't look at her. His gaze remained pinned to the ceiling, toward the third floor directly above them. "You're not leaving this house, Mara. Not tonight. Not when your daughter saw the face of the man trying to put me in a grave."
He stood up slowly. Though his body burned with fever, his sheer willpower forced his muscles to obey. He grabbed a dark leather coat from the chair, throwing it over his shoulders, and motioned to Marco. "We're going up."
"Boss, you can barely stand—"
"I said we're going up." Damian turned his piercing blue-gray eyes onto Mara. "Bring the girl. If she recognizes something up there, I want to know."
Terrified to disobey, Mara lifted Lila into her arms and followed the two massive men out of the room. They moved down the dark, cavernous hallway toward the hidden staircase behind the grand tapestry in the gallery.
The heavy oak door to the third-floor library hung slightly open. The ancient lock had been forced open from the inside, brass splinters littering the dusty floorboards.
Marco pushed the door wide, his gun raised. The room smelled of old paper, ozone, and stale tobacco. Sheet-covered furniture sat like white ghosts in the dark.
Damian walked straight to the mahogany desk at the center of the room. The dust on the desk pad had been cleared away. The blue LED glow of a military-grade terminal lit up his face.
"Someone was here five minutes ago," Marco muttered, checking the perimeter.
Damian leaned over the terminal screen. Lines of encrypted data were scrolling automatically, wiping the system clean. But right before the display went black, a single file window popped up on the monitor.
It was a digitized medical record from St. Jude Children’s Hospital dated four years ago.
Mara leaned in slightly from the doorway, her breath catching in her throat as she caught a glimpse of the patient's name on the screen.
Patient Name: Lila Reyes.
Blood Type: AB Negative.
Donor Match: Volkov, V.
May you like
Damian turned his head slowly, his lethal gaze locking onto Mara's terrified face.
"Your daughter's medical bills weren't paid by a charity agency, Mara," Damian said softly, every word heavy with menace. "They were paid out of my brother's private estate."
