Chapter 8 - The Locked Room on Thirty-One
Nico fired first.
The man outside retreated.
Cassian pulled Marlo and Maria behind the bed.
Gunfire shattered the doorframe.
Then silence.
Nico moved into the corridor.
Empty.
Adrian had escaped.
But he had left something behind.
A hospital bracelet.
CASSIAN VEY.
Marlo examined it.
“Why would he bring this?”
Maria answered.
“Because Cassian was treated here once.”
Cassian looked at her.
“When?”
“You were six.”
He remembered nothing.
Maria led them to the hospital archive.
A hidden room contained records their father had sealed.
Cassian's childhood chart revealed a congenital rhythm disorder.
Treatable.
Manageable.
But exploitable.
Adrian knew exactly which medications could destabilize him without immediately killing him.
The tea magnified the interaction.
The plan had never been murder.
It was incapacity.
Adrian intended to have Cassian declared medically incompetent, seize controlling interests through an emergency clause, then let his brother die later.
Marlo opened the will.
Cassian inherited the Black Lantern only under one condition.
If he became incapacitated before forty, control transferred not to Adrian—
but to a trust.
Maria Bell-Vargas was named trustee.
Everyone stared at her.
Maria shook her head.
“I never wanted it.”
Adrian had needed Maria alive because only she could authorize the transfer.
That explained thirteen years of captivity and surveillance.
Cassian looked at Marlo.
“And if Maria dies?”
Pell read the clause.
“Her legal heir becomes trustee.”
Marlo laughed once.
“No.”
Nico did not laugh.
“You.”
Adrian wasn't simply trying to kill Marlo.
He needed her frightened, controllable, or compromised.
A sound came from the archive door.
Locking.
Nico ran to it.
Too late.
Smoke began pouring through the ventilation system.
Someone had trapped them inside.
Then Cassian's phone rang.
ADRIAN.
Cassian answered.
His brother's voice came through calmly.
“Bring me Marlo, and everyone else walks out.”
Marlo looked toward the smoke thickening beneath the ceiling.
Then another sound came from behind the archive wall.
May you like
Three knocks.
Someone was inside it.
