Chapter 8 - Inside the Vance Estate
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The antique clock in the grand hall chimed midnight, its deep chimes echoing through the vast stone corridors of the estate.
Brennan set a sleek laptop on the low coffee table between them and pulled a small leather-working toolkit from a drawer beneath the mantle.
With steady, surgeon-like precision, he sliced through the invisible wax thread sealing the back of the antique collar strap.
Holly leaned forward, holding her breath as Atlas let out a soft whine, his ears twitching at the metallic scent of the tools.
From the interior lining of the leather, Brennan extracted a micro-drive no larger than a fingernail, encased in a waterproof polymer sleeve.
“Liam spent six months gathering this,” Brennan murmured, his fingers brushing the tiny piece of plastic with absolute reverence.
“He told me that if anything ever happened to him, the truth would be wherever Atlas chose to sleep.”
“He knew he was in danger?” Holly asked softly, the horror of Liam’s final weeks becoming tangible in the quiet room.
“He knew,” Brennan replied, his jaw clenching as he plugged the drive into an encrypted reader connected to his laptop.
“He refused to back down because three city council members and two maritime shipping executives were skimming millions from pension funds and smuggling illicit cargo through the harbor.”
Lines of green and white code flickered across the high-resolution screen as the laptop bypassed the drive’s internal security layers.
Suddenly, folders of high-resolution shipping manifests, recorded telephone calls, and photographic logs populated the display.
Brennan scrolled rapidly through the files, his eyes hardening into flint as the evidence unfolded before him.
“Here it is,” he whispered, clicking on a high-definition image taken at the south shipping yard at two in the morning.
The photograph showed three men standing near a stack of rusted steel shipping containers, watching an armored van load unmarked wooden crates.
One of the men had his face turned toward the camera, illuminated by the harsh glare of a sodium vapor work lamp.
Holly gasped, pointing a trembling finger at the monitor.
“I know that face,” she said, her heart hammering against her ribs.
Brennan froze, his eyes snapping to hers with lightning speed.
“Are you certain?”
“He’s a regular at Ardith House,” Holly said, her voice shaking as memories of her shifts clicked into place like falling dominoes.
“He comes in every other Thursday with two men in grey coats.”
“He always sits at table four, in the corner where the security cameras have a blind spot.”
Brennan’s face went dead white, the fury radiating off him so intensely that Atlas lifted his head and let out a sharp, protective bark.
“Marcus Vance,” Brennan whispered, the name dropping like venom from his tongue.
“Vance?” Holly repeated, horrified.
“He’s your relative?”
“My first cousin,” Brennan said, his knuckles cracking as his hands curled into fists against the armrests of his chair.
“He’s the vice president of Vance Maritime Logistics.”
“He gave Liam’s eulogy at the cathedral,” Brennan whispered, his voice trembling with a terrifying blend of grief and absolute rage.
“He hugged my mother at the cemetery, and he cried while they lowered my brother’s coffin into the ground.”
Atlas rose to his feet and pressed his broad forehead against Brennan’s chest, sensing the tidal wave of agony threatening to consume his master.
Brennan buried his face in the dog’s thick black fur for a long, silent moment, his broad shoulders heaving beneath the weight of the betrayal.
Holly watched the powerful man break, and without thinking, she reached out and placed her small, warm hand over Brennan’s clenched fist.
May you like
Brennan lifted his head, his gray eyes searching hers in the dim, golden firelight.
For the first time since she had walked into Ardith House that evening, neither of them felt like strangers.
