Chapter 7 - THE THREAT GROWS AND THE UNKNOWN CARD
We assembled a tactical team. Federal agents. SWAT. My own security. We planned the raid carefully. At dawn. Surround the building. Cut off all exits. Negotiate first. Storm only if absolutely necessary.
But before we could move... Grace woke up.
She was weak. Wired to monitors. Pale and fragile. But her eyes were clear. And her mind was sharp.
I sat beside her bed and held her hand. She squeezed mine gently.
"I heard them talking," she whispered. "The nurses. Arthur... he sent someone here. To the hospital. He tried to get into my room. Your guards stopped him."
My blood ran cold.
"He reached the second floor," Grace continued. "Before security intercepted him. Nathan... he knows where I am. He tried to finish the job."
I leaned forward. "Grace, Victoria said Arthur has one final secret. A card none of us have found yet. Does that mean anything to you?"
Grace went very still. Her breathing quickened. Monitors beeped faster.
"There was another letter," she whispered. "Elena wrote it. Before the accident. She told me... she told me she gave you something. Hidden. Something Arthur would never find. Something that proves he didn't just kill people for money. Something that shows he was working with someone far more powerful."
"Working with someone?" I asked. "Who?"
Grace shook her head weakly.
"She wouldn't say. Only that Arthur isn't the top. He is answerable to someone else. Someone who funded everything. Someone who pulls Arthur's strings the same way Arthur pulled ours."
The room seemed to tilt. All this time... we had been hunting Arthur. Believing he was the architect. But Grace was saying Arthur was merely a middleman. A soldier answering to a commander we had never seen.
"And Elena hid proof?" I asked. "Where?"
"Where you and she used to go," Grace whispered. "The lake house. Under the floorboards. Beneath the hearth. She said... if anything ever happened to her... you would know exactly where to look."
I stood up abruptly. The lake house. A small cabin my father had owned. Where Elena and I had spent weekends. Where we had talked about our future. Where she had told me she was pregnant before Arthur got to her.
Arthur knew about the lake house. He had mentioned it once in my hearing. In passing. A throwaway line I had forgotten.
He knew. Which meant... he had likely already looked there.
But Victoria said he had one card left to play. And he was confident. Which meant... perhaps he hadn't found it yet. Or perhaps... he had found something else entirely.
I called my second-in-command. Sent a team to the lake house immediately. Secure it. Search every inch. Find whatever was hidden beneath the hearth.
Then I turned back to Grace.
"Rest," I told her. "Stay safe. The guards are doubled. No one gets near you."
"Be careful," she whispered. "If Arthur has a boss... that man is far more dangerous than Arthur. And he has been watching everything unfold."
I nodded and stood up to leave. At the doorway, I looked back. Grace lay there, fighting for her life, caught in a war she hadn't started.
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"I will end this," I promised her silently. "No matter who Arthur answers to."
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