CHAPTER 2: THE FIRST LIE
Elena froze.
Adrian immediately pulled her behind him.
“Who has the gun?” he demanded.
No one answered.
A moment later, the emergency lights flickered on, covering the suite in dim red light.
Victor stood near the window.
His hands were empty.
The silver cane lay on the carpet.
Adrian turned toward Elena.
The flash drive was gone.
Victor smiled again.
“You should have left the past buried.”
Adrian searched the floor, but the drive was nowhere in sight.
Elena stared at Victor.
“You took it.”
“I never moved.”
“You arranged the power outage.”
Victor adjusted his cuff links.
“This hotel belongs to a Vale subsidiary. I can turn off more than the lights.”
Adrian grabbed his father by the front of his tuxedo.
“Where is the drive?”
Victor looked down at Adrian’s hand.
“You’re willing to attack your own father for a woman who admitted she deceived you?”
“I’m willing to protect my wife from a man who thinks money makes him untouchable.”
For the first time, Victor looked genuinely angry.
“You have no idea what I sacrificed to build this family.”
Elena stepped forward.
“You didn’t build it. You stole it.”
Victor’s eyes sharpened.
She continued.
“My mother discovered that you had been moving company money through fake charities. When she tried to report you, you planted stolen funds in her account.”
Adrian released his father.
“That’s what’s on the drive?”
“That and something else.”
Elena’s voice trembled.
“Your father wasn’t working alone.”
Victor glanced toward the door.
Elena noticed.
“So did Adrian.”
Adrian opened the door and looked into the hallway.
His mother, Margaret Vale, stood near the elevator in her silver evening gown.
She was holding the missing flash drive.
Margaret’s face remained perfectly calm.
“You always were careless, Victor,” she said.
Adrian stared at her.
“Mom?”
She raised the drive between two fingers.
“You should have destroyed this years ago.”
Elena moved toward her, but Margaret stepped back.
“You knew?” Adrian asked.
Margaret gave him a sad smile.
“I knew everything.”
Victor left the suite and approached his wife.
“Give it to me.”
Instead, Margaret closed her hand around the drive.
“For eighteen years, you let the world believe Rebecca Cross was a criminal. You made me help you.”
Victor lowered his voice.
“You enjoyed everything that money bought.”
“I enjoyed surviving.”
She looked at Adrian.
“Your father threatened to take you from me if I spoke.”
Adrian’s face hardened.
Margaret continued.
“But Elena is wrong about one thing. The records on this drive do not merely prove financial fraud.”
Elena stared at her.
“What else is there?”
Margaret looked toward Victor.
“They prove what happened to Elena’s father.”
Elena stopped breathing.
Her father, Daniel Cross, had died in a highway accident when she was nine years old.
At least, that was what she had always been told.
Margaret slowly extended the drive toward her.
“His death wasn’t an accident.”
Victor suddenly reached inside his jacket.
Adrian saw the movement.
“Dad, don’t.”
But Victor wasn’t reaching for a gun.
He pulled out a small remote control.
Then he pressed the button.
An explosion shook the lower floors of the hotel.
The ballroom lights vanished.
Guests began screaming below.
May you like
And Margaret looked down at the flash drive in horror.
“He just destroyed the server room.”
