Chapter 7 - The Traitor Behind the Gates
Elena had been dead four years.
Yet her credentials had accessed the Romano network eleven times in three months.
Damian stared at the record.
“Impossible.”
Marco checked again.
“It’s authentic.”
Hazel had stopped at the doorway.
She heard the name.
“Elena?”
Damian looked at her.
Whatever anger Hazel felt was temporarily replaced by confusion.
“Someone is using her identity.”
Damian nodded.
That was the logical explanation.
But logic was becoming scarce.
The access originated inside the estate.
Specifically from Elena’s former bedroom.
A room Damian had kept locked since her death.
He opened it.
Dust covered everything.
Nothing had moved.
Except the computer.
Its power light was on.
Marco searched the system.
An automated program had been running for years.
Elena had created it before she died.
It released information whenever certain conditions occurred.
Hazel’s employment triggered it.
“She knew I would come here,” Hazel whispered.
Damian opened the final file.
A video.
Elena appeared onscreen.
Alive.
Smiling sadly.
Damian sat down.
“If you're seeing this, Damian, then Sarah’s daughter finally found you.”
Hazel covered her mouth.
Elena explained.
She and Sarah had worked together.
Sarah survived.
Elena helped hide her.
Vittorio discovered their plan.
The bombing followed.
“If Hazel comes to you, protect her. Not because of Sarah. Not because of the archive. Because she will have spent her whole life paying for crimes committed by people more powerful than she is.”
Damian looked at Hazel.
Elena continued.
“And Damian? If you still believe loving someone after me is betrayal, you're being an idiot.”
Hazel made a tiny sound between a laugh and a sob.
Even Marco smiled.
Damian closed his eyes.
Four years.
He had needed permission from a dead woman he loved.
And somehow Elena had known.
The video ended with coordinates.
They matched those hidden inside Hazel’s bracelet.
The location was beneath an abandoned church.
Damian turned to Hazel.
“You don't have to come.”
“Yes, I do.”
“You're angry with me.”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
She frowned.
“Good?”
“You should be.”
That disarmed her.
“I knew Sarah Brooks’s name when your application appeared,” Damian said. “I approved you because I wanted to know why her daughter had applied to my house.”
“So Catherine was right.”
“Partly.”
Hazel’s face tightened.
“After the first week, I stopped having you watched.”
“Why?”
“Because you spent forty minutes reorganizing books by height and apologized to a lamp after bumping into it.”
Hazel stared.
Marco coughed to hide a laugh.
“You saw that?”
“Yes.”
“I hate this house.”
Damian almost smiled.
“I know.”
They went to the church.
Beneath the altar they found stairs.
Below them, a steel vault.
Hazel entered the childhood code.
Page seventeen.
Line four.
The vault opened.
Inside were hundreds of files.
Financial records.
Photographs.
Recordings.
Enough evidence to destroy careers, organizations and families.
Hazel found one folder labeled BROOKS.
Inside was a recent photograph.
Sarah.
Alive.
Hazel cried before she could stop herself.
Damian put an arm around her.
This time she leaned into him deliberately.
Then Marco found another file.
ROMANO, DAMIAN.
Inside was a photograph taken three days earlier.
Damian asleep in his bedroom.
Someone had stood beside his bed.
Hazel stared at it.
“Someone is inside your house.”
Damian turned the photograph over.
A message:
YOU PROTECTED THE WRONG WOMAN.
A gunshot exploded upstairs.
Then another.
Marco reached for his radio.
Static.
Damian pulled Hazel behind him.
The vault door began closing automatically.
Someone had activated it from outside.
And through the narrowing gap, Hazel saw a familiar face standing at the top of the stairs.
Marianne.
May you like
She was holding the control.
And smiling.
