Chapter 6 - The Room Beneath the GarageThe old family garage was locked when I arrived.
My father had never let anyone go inside after midnight.
Now I understood why.
Mara forced the door.
Dust filled the air.
Boxes covered the walls.
Childhood photographs.
Holiday decorations.
Old furniture.
Nothing seemed unusual.
Then I noticed the floor.
One section had new screws.
Fresh ones.
I knelt.
"Help me."
Mara removed the panel.
A metal staircase descended into darkness.
I stared.
"I grew up here."
"I know."
"There was no basement."
"Apparently there was."
We went down.
The room beneath the garage was enormous.
Servers lined the walls.
Old monitors.
Bank folders.
Corporate documents.
Photographs.
My entire childhood had been archived beneath the place where I learned to ride a bicycle.
Mara whispered:
"Jesus."
I didn't answer.
Because one wall contained photographs of me.
At fifteen.
Sixteen.
Seventeen.
Eighteen.
There were pictures of me leaving school.
Entering Westbridge.
Meeting Professor Ward.
Going into ValeCore.
Some had dates.
Some had notes.
One read:
Prototype transferred.
Another:
Investor pressure increasing.
And one:
Ava doesn't know.
I took it down.
My hands shook.
Then Mara pointed at a locked cabinet.
"That."
Inside were passports.
Dozens of them.
Different names.
Different photographs.
All connected to Northbridge Holdings.
I found a folder labeled:
VALE FAMILY CONTINGENCY.
Inside was a contract.
My mother had signed it.
So had my father.
So had Victor Kane.
I turned the page.
The document was not about ValeCore.
It was about me.
A clause stated that if ValeCore reached a valuation above ten billion dollars, the family trust would activate.
I read it twice.
Then a third time.
"Why would they need a trust after ten billion?"
Mara didn't answer.
Because we both knew.
They weren't planning to protect the company.
They were planning to control it.
At the bottom of the final page was a signature.
Not my mother's.
Not my father's.
A third signature.
I knew it immediately.
Bianca.
My sister had been sixteen when the document was signed.
She couldn't legally authorize it.
Unless...
"She wasn't sixteen."
Mara looked at me.
"What?"
"The date."
Bianca was seventeen.
But the handwriting looked wrong.
I examined it.
Then I found the handwriting sample from her school records.
Different.
Someone had forged Bianca's signature too.
"Someone used my family," I whispered.
Mara opened another file.
"Ava."
I turned.
There was a photograph.
Victor Kane.
Standing beside my mother.
Outside a bank.
The date was three months before he joined ValeCore.
Behind them was a man whose face had been scratched out.
"Who is that?" Mara asked.
I zoomed in.
The man's watch caught the light.
A black metal watch with a silver scar across the face.
I knew that watch.
I had seen it every Sunday at dinner when I was a child.
My father wore it.
I looked at Mara.
"He was there."
"Your father?"
"Yes."
Suddenly the lights went out.
Every server in the room shut down.
Mara drew her weapon.
I froze.
Footsteps echoed above us.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Someone was walking through the garage.
Then the basement door slammed shut.
We heard a key turn.
Mara rushed upstairs.
Locked.
She hit it once.
Twice.
Nothing.
Then a voice came through a speaker in the wall.
My mother's voice.
"Ava."
I looked up.
"Mom?"
Her voice sounded calm.
Too calm.
"I'm sorry."
Then she said something that made my blood turn cold.
"Your father doesn't know what I did."
A pause.
"And if he finds out..."
May you like
The speaker crackled.
"...he'll kill us both."
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