Chapter 142 A Riddle in Melody
Chapter 142 A Riddle in Melody
Evan sat upright on the bed, his back resting against the plush headboard. The dim glow of the bedside lamp cast a large shadow of him against the wall. He stared at Alice with a deep frown.
“That necklace?” Evan asked in a low voice. “You mean the gold key necklace that Grace seized and destroyed when they tried to force it open in that lab?”
Alice nodded weakly. She leaned back against the pillows Evan had stacked behind her. “Yes. The law firm said the physical key was only a formality. The most important part was the digital code engraved on the inside of the key plate. But you know it yourself, the necklace was shattered into pieces when Grace’s machine tried to break its security system.”
Evan rubbed his face roughly. “Damn it. We don’t have any metal fragments left. Everything turned into tiny shards when the explosion happened at Grace’s headquarters. I thought that necklace was just a symbol of Elino’s asset ownership here. I never realized it was an access key to Switzerland.”
“They said the deposit contains my mother’s personal documents and something called a ‘protective inheritance.’ I don’t know what that means,” Alice said, her voice filled with unease.
“Without the code, we can’t open it. Swiss banking systems are the strictest in the world. They don’t care if you’re the rightful owner if you don’t have the code,” Evan sighed in frustration. He glanced at the bedside drawer, as if hoping the necklace fragments would magically appear there.
The room fell silent. Alice stared blankly at the foot of the bed. She tried to rewind her memories. Her mother was not the kind of person who would let something important disappear without a backup.
“Evan…” Alice finally broke the silence. “Papa once told me, ‘If you forget the key, listen to your heart.’ Back then, I thought he was just talking about emotions, but now I remember something.”
Evan turned to her quickly. “What is it?”
“When I was very little, before I fell asleep, Papa often sang me a short song. It wasn’t a normal lullaby. The lyrics were strange, just a sequence of nonsensical English words and numbers,” Alice closed her eyes, trying to pull the memory from twenty years ago.
“Take your time, Alice. Slowly,” Evan whispered as he held her hand, grounding her.
Alice took a deep breath. She began to hum softly in a low, rhythmic tone.
“Three birds in the silver sky… flying over seven hills… nine stars shining bright… zero clouds in the night…”
She paused, her brow creasing in deep concentration. “Then there was the strangest part… Two gates open wide, eight flowers on the side…”
Evan immediately grabbed his phone from the nightstand and opened the notes app. “Go on, Alice. Is there anything else?”
“That was the part he always repeated. Three, seven, nine, zero, two, eight. Papa called it ‘Alice’s Secret Code Song.’ He always made me memorize it while playing with my fingers,” Alice opened her eyes and looked at Evan with a spark of hope.
“3-7-9-0-2-8,” Evan typed the numbers. “Only six digits? Swiss bank codes are usually at least eight or twelve digits.”
“Wait, there’s one more part that just came back to me,” Alice held her head. “Papa always ended the song by kissing my forehead and whispering my mother’s birth year and my name.”
“Your mother’s birth year… 1978. And your name… Alice. A-L-I-C-E,” Evan calculated quickly. “In older coding systems, letters were often converted into numbers. A is 1, L is 12, I is 9, C is 3, E is 5.”
Evan immediately placed a secure call to Rico, even though it was already very late.
“Rico, wake up the IT team right now. I have a sequence of numbers and words. I want them matched to the format of old-style deposit box keys used by the Swiss bank Le Crédit in the 1990s,” Evan ordered without preamble.
“Yes, Young Master. Give me the numbers,” Rico replied on the other end, his voice still hoarse with sleep.
Evan read out the sequence derived from Alice’s song. Alice watched anxiously. It felt like they were solving an ancient riddle left behind by her parents as their final line of defense.
“Evan, what if the code is wrong? What if Grace managed to duplicate it before the necklace was destroyed?” Alice asked.
“That’s impossible. The necklace was designed to self-destruct if someone tried to force it open with Grace’s industrial laser tools. The chip inside would have burned instantly. If your song is correct, then we are the only ones who have the original code now,” Evan said with confidence.
An hour passed in tense silence. Evan and Alice stayed awake, leaning against the headboard as they waited for news from Rico. From time to time, Alice rubbed her belly, feeling small movements from her baby, as if the child could sense her mother’s anxiety.
Evan’s phone vibrated. A message from Rico came in.
“Young Master, we have entered the number sequence from the lyrics into our decryption simulator. The result matches 100 percent with the digital key pattern used by that bank. It is a two-stage access code. The first stage is numerical, the second stage is name conversion.”
Evan showed the message to Alice. She covered her mouth as tears of relief streamed down her face.
“Papa… he really hid everything in that song,” Alice whispered.
“Tomorrow we’ll take care of the power of attorney at the bank’s representative office here. You don’t need to fly to Switzerland in your condition. They can send the contents under diplomatic escort,” Evan said.
Alice smiled. Another missing piece of her life puzzle had fallen into place. She felt as though her parents were still protecting her, even after their deaths.
“I wonder what my mother left in there,” Alice said softly.
“Whatever it is, it belongs to you. And no one will ever steal it from you again,” Evan said as he pulled Alice into his arms and kissed the top of her head.
The next morning, the house was far busier than usual. The Nathaniel legal team gathered in Zavian’s study. Alice handed over the neatly written code to their senior lawyer.
“Move quickly. I want those items here before Alice’s belly gets any bigger,” Zavian instructed his legal team.
“Yes, Sir. We will contact our Zurich representatives immediately,” the lawyer replied.
Alice stood by the window, gazing out at the bright garden. She felt as though all the storms had finally passed, and now she only needed to collect the memories that had long been buried.
Evan approached her with a glass of warm milk. “Stop daydreaming. The code is safe in their hands now.”
“I was just thinking, Evan. If that song hadn’t been a code at all, just an ordinary song… what would we have done?” Alice asked.
“We would have found another way. I’m a Nathaniel, Alice. There is no door truly locked to me if it concerns you,” Evan replied with his trademark arrogance, which made Alice laugh this time.
That afternoon, while Alice was resting in the back pavilion, Lily arrived carrying a small box that had just been delivered by a special courier. The box bore an official Swiss bank seal, but it did not contain the deposit’s contents. It was a verification confirmation letter.
Alice opened it with trembling hands. The letter stated that the code had been accepted and access granted. However, there was a handwritten footnote in German that had already been translated by the bank staff.
Evan read it aloud softly. “For my daughter Alice. If you have opened this, then you are old enough to understand that the true enemy is not only those in front of your eyes, but those who share the same blood as you.”
Alice frowned. “What does that mean? Edwin and his family are already in prison. Who else could Mother be referring to?”
Evan looked at Alice with a very serious expression. His mind flashed back to Viktor’s threat in the underground facility, about Zavian’s secret from ten years ago, something he had never fully investigated.
“Maybe it’s just a warning about Edwin,” Evan said, trying to calm her. “Don’t think too much about it.”
But as Evan was about to fold the letter, his eyes caught a small symbol in the bottom corner of the page. A black rose split by a sword, the same symbol as the tattoo he had seen on Viktor’s wrist before the man was taken away by Zavian’s guards.
Evan clenched the letter behind his back. “Alice, go inside first. I need to talk to Rico for a moment in the front office.”
“Evan? Your face looks tense again. What’s wrong?” Alice asked suspiciously.