Chapter 248

Chapter 248

"I'm here to ask about someone," Audrey said. "Decades ago, was there a little girl from this area who was taken away by outsiders?"

"There were plenty of little girls taken by outsiders. Which one are you talking about?" the old man replied dismissively.

Audrey pulled out the signet ring. "Have you ever seen this?"

The old man glanced down and froze.

"Who are you?"

"My mother left this to me," Audrey said.

"Your mother..."

The old man murmured the words, and the café fell silent for a moment.

His gaze fixed on the signet ring, his fingers trembling slightly, his lips parting and closing several times.

"Sir?" Audrey noticed his reaction. "Do you recognize this ring?"

The old man snapped out of it and looked up. "Come with me."

He stood and slowly walked toward the back door of the café. Audrey followed him through a narrow hallway into a small room cluttered with old belongings.

The room was modest. Against the wall stood an old wooden cabinet. The old man approached it, fumbling at his waist for a brass key. His hands shook as he inserted it into the lock and turned it twice.

The cabinet door opened, revealing several yellowed photo albums stacked neatly inside. The old man reached in and pulled out a small wooden box from the very back.

He opened the lid. Inside lay a signet ring, identical to the one in Audrey's hand.

Audrey's breath caught. "This is..."

"This is the Turner family heirloom," the old man said slowly. "The ring you're holding belonged to the legitimate daughters of the Turner family. Passed down through generations. Never given to outsiders."

His eyes settled on Audrey's face. "Which means you carry Turner blood."

Audrey was silent for a moment before asking softly, "What kind of family were the Turners?"

The old man lowered himself into an old rattan chair. "The Turner family was once the most prominent in Suncrest City. And their children—every single one of them was extraordinarily gifted."

"Some were born with an exceptional sensitivity to color. They grew up to become painters without equal. Others had a natural intuition for mechanical structures—they could dismantle and reassemble complex machinery at just a few years old. They became renowned engineers."

"What happened to them?" Audrey asked.

"Later, a powerful family in Sunrise City took notice of the Turners' talents. They wanted to claim the Turners for themselves—to use them. The Turners refused."

"So to punish them, they orchestrated a massacre. Publicly, they said the Turner Villa caught fire by accident. But that fire was set deliberately. That night, nearly everyone in the household—dozens of people—was killed."

The old man paused. "The fire started in the middle of the night. By the time I realized what was happening, the entire villa had burned to the ground."

He continued, "I knew the Turners well, so I helped with the rescue efforts. But all we found were bodies. Except for one—the youngest daughter. She was never found."

"She'd just turned one year old. No one knew where she'd been taken. Everyone assumed she'd died in the fire, too. But I always had a feeling she survived."

The old man paused, his gaze returning to Audrey's face. "Now I know I was right."

"My mother was that little girl, wasn't she?" Audrey asked.

The old man nodded. Audrey fell silent for a long time.

She looked down at the ring in her palm. This ring had followed Bronte through half a lifetime of wandering, then passed into her own hands. After all this time, it had finally brought her back to Suncrest City.

Perhaps, in some unseen way, Brontë had been guiding her here all along.

"That fire," Audrey lifted her head. "Who set it?"

"I don't know. There were theories, rumors—but no proof."

Meanwhile, Declan sat in his office. 

Over the past few days, he'd sent out no fewer than thirty lucrative job offers through headhunting firms, each one more generous than the last. He'd interviewed over a dozen so-called top-tier technical experts, but not one of them could truly understand the underlying logic of that system.

"Mr. Ross," the technical consultant said with an awkward expression, "the expert we contacted last week—the one who claimed to have worked on a national-level encryption project—he declined this morning."

"Why?"

"He said the system architecture is too advanced. With his current knowledge, it would take him at least six months to fully grasp it."

Declan's expression darkened completely.

He'd thought that acquiring Black Raven's technical rights was like getting the key to a treasure vault. But reality had dealt him a harsh blow.

His phone buzzed on the desk. Declan glanced at the caller ID, and his frown deepened.

It was his company's largest investor—Vertex Global Holdings.

He took a deep breath and answered. "Mr. Bailey."

"Declan, how's the Black Raven project coming along? When are we going to see returns?"

"Mr. Bailey, technical integration takes time—"

"Declan, I've given you plenty of time. If you can't make this work, we'll find someone who can."

The call ended. Declan's face was grim.