Chapter 4 - WHAT ADRIAN INHERITED
We climbed six stories through a maintenance shaft while smoke curled upward beneath us. My palms burned against the metal rungs, my diamonds felt absurdly heavy, and the hem of my gown kept catching on bolts. Adrian climbed below me, returning fire once when a shadow appeared through the access grate. He never asked whether I was afraid.
I was afraid. I simply had more important things to do than show it. We emerged behind the hotel kitchen at 12:18 a.m. The gala had been evacuated into the street, where wealthy guests stood under emergency blankets while cameras flashed from behind police barricades. Adrian’s security team surrounded us immediately. His chief, Marcus Kane, reported that Travis had left through the west service exit seven minutes before the fire alarm.
“Find him,” Adrian said. Marcus hesitated. “He took two men with him. One of them is on your private payroll.” Adrian’s expression did not change, but I saw the wound land. Betrayal bothered him more than danger. I had learned that during my first month at Vale Holdings, when he fired a vice president for lying over a mistake he would have forgiven if confessed.
I held the Hawthorne Trust box against my chest. “We need somewhere secure.” Adrian looked at the police, then at the reporters gathering across Fifth Avenue. “Not my penthouse. Not the office.”
“Then where?” He met my eyes. “Your place.” I almost laughed. “Absolutely not.” “Why?” “Because my apartment contains exactly one bedroom, four locks, and no armed guards.” “It also isn’t on any Vale security plan. Which means Travis may not know where it is.”
Unfortunately, that was true. Forty minutes later, the most feared man at Vale Holdings stood inside my Queens apartment staring at a ceramic bowl filled with coupons on the kitchen counter. The contrast was so ridiculous that I nearly forgot people had tried to burn us alive. Adrian removed his tuxedo jacket and placed the rescued hard drives beside the Hawthorne box.
“You really live here?” he asked. “I pay rent here. Living requires free time.” He glanced toward the framed photograph near the refrigerator. My mother and I stood on a beach under a cheap umbrella, both laughing. It was taken three years after the fire, when her memory was already beginning to fracture but before she needed full-time care.
“Rose Parker isn’t her real name,” he said. “No.” “Isabella Moretti?” I looked at him sharply. “My father kept files,” Adrian said. “I read some after he died. Not enough, apparently.”
“Why didn’t you know about me?” “Because the file said Matteo’s daughter died in the Tarrytown fire.” I sat across from him. “I was supposed to.” The words came easier than I expected. On the night of the fire, my mother had pulled me through a wine-cellar tunnel while gunshots sounded above us. My younger brother Gabriel had gone back upstairs looking for our father. We never saw him again. My mother and I lived under temporary identities, then permanent ones. I told no one because every question felt like a door someone could follow us through.
Adrian listened without interrupting. When I finished, he said, “My father told me the Morettis attacked first.” “Of course he did.” “I believed him.” “Of course you did.” His eyes hardened. “You don’t know what I was at twenty-three.”
“No. And you don’t know what I was at twenty-two.” For a moment, neither of us spoke. Two heirs to men who had poisoned their families sat beneath a flickering kitchen light, surrounded by secrets neither of us had chosen.
We opened the Hawthorne Trust box. Inside were copies of property deeds, insurance documents, coded ledgers, and a sealed legal file. The first page stunned me. The Hawthorne Grand itself was not owned by the hotel corporation listed publicly. It was controlled by a private trust established by my grandmother, Lucia Moretti, with succession rights passing to her direct descendants.
Adrian read the clause twice. “You own the hotel.” “Apparently I own a building someone just tried to burn beneath me.” There was more. The trust controlled minority interests in several companies now operating under Vale Holdings. Some had been transferred after the Moretti fire using signatures allegedly belonging to my father. The dates proved the signatures were fraudulent.
Adrian leaned back slowly. “If this is authentic, my company has been using stolen assets for ten years.” “Your company?” He understood the question. “I inherited Vale Holdings after my father died. I shut down narcotics routes, moved money into legitimate real estate, and cut off three crews that refused. But I didn’t dismantle everything. I told myself control was better than chaos.”
“And now?” “Now I’m wondering how much of what I control was built on lies I never bothered to question.” Before I could respond, my phone rang. The memory-care facility.
I answered immediately. A nurse spoke in a strained whisper. “Ms. Parker, I’m sorry, but your mother is missing.” My blood turned cold. “What do you mean missing?” “Two men arrived with transfer paperwork. It looked authentic. They said you had authorized an emergency move after a security threat. By the time we verified the number, they were gone.”
I stood so fast my chair struck the wall. Adrian was already reaching for his gun. Then a text message appeared on my screen from an unknown number. A photograph loaded.
My mother sat in the back seat of a dark car, frightened but unharmed. Beside the image was a message. BRING THE SILVER KEY TO PIER 19. COME ALONE. Beneath it, another line appeared.
May you like
OR ISABELLA REMEMBERS HER LAST CHRISTMAS IN A BODY BAG. Adrian read it over my shoulder. “I’m going,” I said. “So am I.” “They said alone.” “They already tried to kill you twice.” His voice lowered. “They don’t get to set the rules anymore.”
I looked at the photograph of my mother and felt the old Moretti fear return—the fear that everyone I loved became leverage sooner or later. Then I closed the Hawthorne file. “Fine,” I said. “But this time, we set the trap.”
