Chapter 3 - THE FIRE THEY NEVER EXPLAINED
Adrian was seven when his mother died.
That was what he told me the next morning.
Not because we were suddenly friends.
Not because he trusted me.
Because I had become part of whatever was inside that frame.
We sat in the old breakfast room while rain hit the windows.
Grant was nowhere in sight.
“Her name was Elena Vale,” Adrian said.
“She died in a fire at our old house.”
“An accident?”
“That’s what I was told.”
“By Grant?”
“No.”
He looked toward the window.
“By my uncle, Dominic.”
I knew the name.
Dominic Vale had founded much of the organization Adrian inherited.
He died twelve years earlier.
“If Dominic told you it was an accident, why did Grant react?”
“That’s the question.”
Adrian’s mother had worked as an accountant before marrying into the Vale family.
According to Adrian, she hated most of what his father and uncle did.
But she stayed because she believed leaving would put Adrian in greater danger.
Then one winter night, fire consumed the east side of the old estate.
Elena died inside.
Adrian survived because she had sent him to spend the night with a family friend.
“Did your father survive?”
“My father died six months before the fire.”
“How?”
Adrian looked at me.
“Car accident.”
I didn’t ask whether he believed that one either.
The note mentioned a ledger.
“What ledger?”
“I don’t know.”
His answer came too quickly.
I raised an eyebrow.
He almost smiled.
“You’re brave for an employee.”
“I’m trying not to be stupid.”
“That remains undecided.”
Then Brian—no, in this world Grant is adviser. We have Grant. Let's keep. Grant entered without knocking.
“I found something.”
He put an old photograph on the table.
It showed Adrian as a little boy sitting beside Elena at a wooden desk.
On the desk were glass jars filled with coins.
His mother was pointing at one jar while Adrian held up three fingers.
Where I taught you to count.
I looked at Adrian.
“The desk.”
He nodded.
“Where is it?”
Grant answered.
“Storage.”
Adrian’s expression hardened.
“You knew we still had it?”
“I oversee the estate inventory.”
“Then why didn’t you mention it?”
Grant’s jaw tightened.
“Because I didn’t know about the note.”
I watched both men.
They had known each other their entire lives.
But something had changed.
Suspicion had entered the room.
The desk was brought up from storage an hour later.
Old oak.
Scratched legs.
One drawer missing a handle.
Adrian ran his hand over the surface.
Then he stopped.
“There.”
Tiny numbers had been carved into the edge.
1, 2, 3, 5, 8.
A sequence.
I recognized it.
“Fibonacci.”
Adrian looked at me.
“You know that?”
“I finished two years of accounting before my mother got sick.”
He looked surprised.
I continued tracing the numbers.
The pattern repeated beneath the drawer.
Then I found a tiny metal catch.
A hidden compartment opened.
Inside was not a ledger.
It was a brass key.
And beneath it was a photograph.
Elena.
Standing beside Dominic Vale.
And a third man.
Grant’s father.
May you like
On the back, Elena had written:
ONE OF THEM SOLD US OUT.
