Chapter 15 - The Enemy Inside the Mansion
Bringing Adrian back to life legally turned out to be harder than surviving death.
Government agencies wanted proof.
Fingerprints.
DNA.
Medical records.
Testimony.
The false identities complicated everything.
So did Vincent.
His attorneys claimed Adrian was an impostor attempting to manipulate ownership of Cross Holdings.
The argument was absurd.
It was also effective enough to slow proceedings.
Meanwhile, someone inside the estate was still leaking information.
Adrian had warned us.
Vincent has someone near you.
We had assumed Julian.
Then Daniel.
Then Mrs. Thornbury.
All wrong.
Darius began auditing employee communications.
Nothing.
Stellan replaced several guards.
Nothing.
We moved Fern’s nursery.
The location leaked within six hours.
That meant the person had direct internal access.
I stopped trusting everyone.
Except oddly, Stellan.
And Adrian.
One night, I entered the kitchen to warm Fern’s bottle.
A young staff member named Clara was there.
She had worked in laundry services since before I arrived.
We had spoken many times.
She smiled.
“Can’t sleep?”
“Fern disagrees with nighttime.”
Clara laughed.
“She’s adorable.”
I smiled.
Then noticed her phone.
A message notification flashed.
V.C.
My entire body went still.
Clara quickly turned the phone over.
Too quickly.
“Who’s V.C.?”
Her face changed.
“My cousin.”
“What’s their name?”
“Victor.”
I nodded.
Pretended I believed her.
Then walked away.
I found Stellan.
Ten minutes later, Darius quietly detained Clara.
Her phone contained encrypted messages.
Photographs of Fern.
Schedules.
Floor plans.
Payment records.
Vincent had recruited her two years earlier.
She had applied for employment specifically to enter the estate.
Stellan looked furious.
I felt strangely sad.
Clara cried during questioning.
“He said nobody would get hurt.”
Adrian laughed bitterly.
“That line should be printed on our family crest.”
Clara admitted she transmitted information.
But she also revealed something worse.
Vincent had one final plan.
“If he loses the company,” she said, “he destroys it.”
“How?” Stellan asked.
“I don’t know.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
Darius discovered the answer.
Cross Holdings maintained a massive data center connected to financial and corporate operations.
Vincent had built a dormant destruction protocol years earlier.
If activated, it could erase records, move funds through offshore accounts, and potentially destroy evidence.
“It’s not about money anymore,” Adrian said.
“It’s about making sure nobody else has it.”
Stellan nodded.
“Father would burn the house before letting someone inherit it.”
The protocol required a biometric authorization.
Vincent’s.
But he was in federal custody.
Unless there was another authorization.
Darius searched the architecture.
Three biometric profiles existed.
Vincent.
Stellan.
Adrian.
The brothers stared at each other.
“Why?” I asked.
Stellan understood first.
“Because he expected one of us to become successor.”
Adrian looked sick.
“If someone copied our biometrics…”
“Clara photographed everything,” Darius said.
“Photographs aren’t enough.”
“For modern security, no. For a twenty-year-old legacy system?”
Possibly.
We had forty-eight hours before a scheduled infrastructure synchronization.
That was the most likely activation point.
For the next two days, nobody left the estate except security teams.
Adrian helped engineers isolate systems.
Stellan contacted federal authorities.
I stayed with Fern.
At midnight before the synchronization, power went out.
Entire mansion.
Backup generators failed.
My heart stopped.
“Stellan!”
Emergency lights did not activate.
Someone screamed downstairs.
Then Darius’s voice came through a battery radio.
“Data center breach.”
Adrian ran past me.
“Stay with Fern.”
I grabbed his arm.
“Come back.”
He looked at me.
“I will.”
For once, I believed him.
Stellan appeared.
“Basement secure room.”
I carried Fern downstairs with Helena and Thornbury.
Outside, Chicago lights still glowed.
Only the estate was dark.
Minutes passed.
Then an hour.
No communication.
Fern began crying.
Not from fear.
From exhaustion.
I held her.
“It’s okay.”
I hoped I wasn’t lying.
At 1:32 a.m., power returned.
Monitors came online.
A warning flashed.
LEGACY PROTOCOL ACTIVE.
Darius shouted through the radio.
“Someone initiated the wipe!”
Helena looked at me.
“Can they stop it?”
I didn’t know.
Then Stellan appeared on screen inside the data center.
Adrian beside him.
Countdown:
04:58.
Four minutes fifty-eight seconds.
Stellan tried biometric cancellation.
Rejected.
Adrian tried.
Rejected.
Darius realized why.
“Original authorization requires Vincent.”
“Impossible,” I whispered.
Then Helena stood.
“No.”
Everyone looked at her.
“Vincent never trusted biometrics.”
“What?”
“He trusted bloodline.”
She looked at Fern.
My stomach dropped.
“No.”
Helena shook her head.
“Not blood literally. Family sequence.”
She remembered something Vincent used decades earlier.
A code based on the birth order of the sons.
Stellan.
Evan.
Adrian.
Dates.
Darius fed the numbers to them.
Rejected.
Three minutes.
Then I remembered Fern’s hidden name.
Fern Vincent Cross.
Legacy.
Vincent’s obsession.
“What about Grandmother Fern?”
Helena looked at me.
“Her birthday.”
They combined it.
Fern’s birthday.
The brothers’ birthdays.
Vincent’s.
Rejected.
One minute.
Then Adrian looked at the camera.
“Evan.”
“What?”
“The code isn’t our birthdays.”
Stellan understood.
“The dates we left.”
Evan’s death.
Adrian’s staged death.
Vincent’s staged death.
Three disappearances.
They entered the dates.
The countdown stopped at twelve seconds.
PROTOCOL CANCELLED.
Everyone exhaled.
Then a second message appeared.
EXTERNAL ACCESS TERMINATED.
Vincent’s final weapon disappeared.
We had won.
Or thought we had.
Until Darius found the origin of the activation.
It had not come from Vincent’s attorneys.
Not from Clara.
Not from Marcus.
It came from inside federal custody.
Someone had given Vincent access.
The conspiracy reached further than we thought.
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And before Fern could truly be safe, one last network had to fall.
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