Chapter 6 - The Secret on the Executive Floor
Emily did not go alone.
She wanted to.
Adrian refused.
When he arrived at her house twenty minutes later with Marcus, Emily was already putting on her coat.
“No.”
She stared at him.
“My brother is missing.”
“And whoever sent that expects you to panic.”
“I am panicking.”
“I know.”
“Then move.”
Adrian stepped aside.
But he followed.
So did Marcus.
Charles remained with Margaret and contacted a private security team while police were notified about Noah.
On the drive, Emily called her brother repeatedly.
Nothing.
Her hands shook.
Adrian sat beside her.
“He may be fine.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No.”
She appreciated that he didn’t lie.
Whitmore Holdings looked different at night.
Dark.
Empty.
Too quiet.
The security desk had no record of Noah entering.
Emily showed the note.
COME TO WHITMORE ALONE.
“Executive floor,” she said.
“How do you know?”
“I don’t.”
She thought about April 17.
W-17.
Then she remembered the file directory.
Seventeenth floor.
“Floor seventeen.”
Adrian looked at Marcus.
“There is no seventeenth floor.”
Emily frowned.
The elevator panel jumped from sixteen to eighteen.
“Why?”
“Original architectural design. My grandfather was superstitious.”
Emily stared.
“Or somebody wanted people to think it didn’t exist.”
Marcus accessed the service controls.
A hidden option appeared.
The elevator descended one floor from eighteen.
The doors opened.
Darkness.
Emily stepped out.
Old offices.
Storage cabinets.
Dust.
Adrian switched on his phone flashlight.
At the end of the corridor stood a locked records room.
Marcus opened it with executive authorization.
Inside were hundreds of boxes.
Emily found W-17 written on one.
Her pulse accelerated.
They opened it.
Old invoices.
Personnel records.
Audit notes.
Then Emily found a photograph.
Her mother.
Young.
Standing beside Charles.
And beside them—
Victoria.
On the back was a date.
April 17.
Nineteen years earlier.
Emily frowned.
“This was three years after Mom left.”
Adrian turned it over.
There was handwriting.
MARGARET RETURNED. SHE KNOWS.
Emily’s stomach tightened.
“My mother came back?”
Marcus found another folder.
Inside were surveillance photographs.
Margaret.
Daniel Carter.
Their house.
Emily as a child.
Noah as a toddler.
Someone had watched them for years.
Emily felt sick.
Adrian said quietly, “I’m sorry.”
She ignored him and kept searching.
Then they heard something.
A phone vibrating.
From behind a cabinet.
Emily moved toward it.
“Wait,” Adrian said.
She pushed the cabinet aside.
A narrow door appeared.
Unlocked.
Emily opened it.
“Noah?”
Her brother sat on the floor.
Alive.
Angry.
And completely confused.
“Emily?”
She rushed to him.
“Oh my God.”
“What are you doing here?”
“What am I doing here?”
She hugged him so hard he grunted.
“You weren’t answering.”
“My phone died.”
“Your ID was left at our house!”
Noah frowned.
“What?”
He explained.
A woman had approached him outside class saying Emily had been injured at work.
She drove him to Whitmore.
Then left him in the room “for his protection.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Describe her.”
Before he could, Adrian found another document.
“Emily.”
She looked.
A security photograph.
Victoria.
Noah pointed.
“Her.”
Adrian went still.
Victoria had brought Noah here.
Emily’s anger exploded.
“She threatened my family.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
“The message may not have come from her.”
“She took Noah!”
“Yes. But why hide him somewhere we could find him?”
Noah added, “She seemed scared.”
Emily stared.
“Scared of what?”
“She kept saying somebody had started again.”
A sound came from the hallway.
Footsteps.
Victoria appeared.
Adrian moved between her and Emily.
“What did you do?”
Victoria looked exhausted.
“I kept him alive.”
Emily stepped around Adrian.
“By kidnapping him?”
“I lied to him. Yes. Because someone was following him.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
Victoria looked at the files.
Then at Emily.
“I tried to keep you out of this company because your application triggered an alert in W-17.”
Emily froze.
“What?”
“The moment your name entered the recruitment system, someone began accessing old files.”
“So you sabotaged my application.”
“Yes.”
“To protect me?”
“And the company.”
Emily almost laughed.
“Of course.”
Victoria removed something from her purse.
An old key.
“Your mother gave me this nineteen years ago.”
“Why?”
“She returned to Whitmore on April seventeenth because she had finally discovered who framed her.”
Emily stopped breathing.
“Who?”
Victoria looked toward Adrian.
“I never let her tell me.”
“What?”
“I panicked. I told her to leave. I told her never to come back.”
Adrian’s jaw tightened.
“So all these years—”
“I was a coward.”
Emily thought of her mother saying almost the same thing about Charles.
An entire family of powerful people had been frightened into silence.
“And my father?”
Victoria’s eyes filled.
“Daniel didn’t stop.”
Emily looked at the key.
“What does it open?”
Victoria pointed deeper into the hidden room.
A steel cabinet stood against the wall.
Emily inserted the key.
Inside was a small recorder.
Old.
Dusty.
A label was taped to it.
APRIL 17.
Emily pressed play.
Static.
Then her mother’s younger voice.
“If anything happens to me, the person moving the money is—”
The recording cut out.
Emily stared.
“No.”
She pressed buttons.
Nothing.
Marcus examined it.
“The tape may be damaged.”
Then Noah noticed something.
“There’s another one.”
Behind the recorder was a second cassette.
Daniel Carter.
Emily’s father.
Her hands trembled as she inserted it.
His voice filled the room.
“Emily, if you’re hearing this, I failed to finish what your mother started.”
Emily covered her mouth.
The recording continued.
“I know who controls W-17.”
A sound came from outside.
The lights suddenly died.
Then the steel door slammed shut.
Someone locked them inside.
May you like
In the darkness, Emily’s father’s voice continued:
“And the person you’re looking for is still working at Whitmore.”
