Chapter 74 The Double Agent
David’s POV
The basement was a graveyard of cold air and shadows. I didn't go to the server room. I didn't need to. Leo’s signal had told me everything I needed to know about the attempt, but my own gut told me where the real threat was hiding. I turned away from the stairs and moved back up through the house, my feet making no sound on the carpeted floors. I wasn't headed for the cameras or the vault. I was headed for the one place where the lie had been born.
I reached the door to the guest suite at exactly two in the morning. I didn't knock. I didn't hesitate. I opened the door and stepped inside, the darkness of the room feeling heavy and stale. I walked to the armchair in the corner, the one positioned perfectly to watch the bed, and I sat down. I placed my hands on my knees and I waited.
The silence lasted for nearly five minutes. Then, the figure under the covers shifted. A sharp intake of breath hissed through the room as they realized they weren't alone. I reached out and flicked the switch on the floor lamp. The light was harsh and yellow, cutting through the gloom and hitting the source directly in the eyes.
Elena blinked, shielding her face with one hand. She sat up slowly, her hair a mess, her eyes darting toward the nightstand where her tablet lay charging. She saw me sitting there, my face a mask of iron, and I watched her mind work. I watched the calculation happen in approximately three seconds. It was a visible process. First came the confusion, then the realization of the truth, and finally the cold acceptance that no version of this conversation ended with her cover intact.
She didn't try to cry. She didn't try to lie. She just sat back against the headboard and looked at me with a steady, clinical gaze.
"You took your time getting here, David," she said. Her voice was different now. The soft, helpful assistant was gone. This was the voice of a professional who had been caught but wasn't broken.
"Tell me who you're actually working for," I said. My voice was very quiet, barely rising above a whisper. "And don't waste my time with the brothers. We both know Richard is a blunt instrument. He doesn't have the patience for a credential replay attack. He doesn't even know what a biometric clone is. I want the name of the person above them. The person who actually built the trap."
Elena stared at me. She didn't blink. The silence in the room stretched out, thick and suffocating. Outside, a branch scraped against the window, the sound like a fingernail on a chalkboard. I didn't look away from her. I kept my eyes fixed on hers, letting the weight of my presence fill the small space.
"Richard thinks he’s in charge," I continued, leaning forward just an inch. "He thinks he’s the one who found you and planted you here. But that credential clone you attempted tonight was too sophisticated for him to have ordered. Richard doesn't think at that level. He doesn't have the reach to source that kind of tech. Someone above him does. Someone who has been watching me longer than Richard has been alive."
The source was silent for twenty seconds. I counted them by the thumping of the blood in my temples. She looked down at her hands, then back at me. A small, twisted smile pulled at the corners of her mouth. It was the look of someone tired of holding a secret that was too heavy to carry.
"You always were the smartest of the lot, David," she said. "That was your problem. You thought being the smartest meant you were the only one playing the game. You thought the board was limited to the people you could see."
"The name, Elena," I said, my patience snapping like a dry twig. "Give me the name."
"You think Richard and Harrison are the ones who want to stop the gala?" she asked. "They are just children playing with matches. They are being told what to do, just like I was. They are being promised a kingdom that was never theirs to begin with."
"Who is promising it?" I asked.
She took a deep breath, her shoulders sagging as she finally let go of the mask. She looked me directly in the eyes, and for a moment, I saw a flash of genuine pity in her expression. It was the look you give a man who doesn't realize he’s already standing in his own grave.
"I’ve been sending reports every night," she whispered. "Not to a shell company in the Caymans. Not to a server in North Houston. I’ve been sending them to a private uplink in the Mediterranean. To a man who has been waiting for you to get exactly this close to the finish line before he pulls the rug out."
"Richard doesn't have an uplink in the Mediterranean," I said, my brow furrowing as the architecture of my reality began to shift.
"No," she agreed. "He doesn't."
She said a name then. She said it so softly I almost missed it, but the syllables hit me with the force of a physical blow. It was a name I had not heard spoken in eleven years. It was a name that belonged to a history I had buried under layers of corporate law and stone monuments. It was a name that changed the entire geometry of the conspiracy against me. My mind raced, trying to find a hole in the logic, trying to find a way that she could be lying, but the sophistication of the attack and the depth of the betrayal suddenly made a terrible, perfect kind of sense.
I felt the air leave the room. I felt the walls of the mansion closing in on me, the very stones of the house feeling like they belonged to someone else. The man I had believed was a ghost was standing in the shadows of my own life, pulling the strings of my brothers like they were puppets. The war wasn't about a trust fund or a collection of dresses. It was about a legacy that refused to stay buried.
The name is his father's. Harrison Blackwell is not dead.