Chapter 7 - THE FALL
Adrian's death had been ruled accidental.
He had been drinking.
The hotel railing was low.
No witnesses.
That story had survived four years because nobody had given police a reason to challenge it.
Now Mara reopened the file.
The original scene photographs showed Adrian's broken watch near the balcony door.
One detail had been ignored.
A faint bruising pattern around his wrist.
"Someone grabbed him," Mara said.
The medical examiner could not prove it after four years.
But the possibility changed everything.
Owen Kane had been in the same city that night.
So had Julian.
Julian claimed he flew home earlier.
Flight records said otherwise.
His private jet left the next morning.
I sat in Adrian's old bedroom, a room my mother had never changed.
Elena knocked.
"Mr. Vale?"
"Ethan."
She hesitated.
"Noah won't sleep."
I found him under my bed with his dinosaur.
"Buddy?"
"The glasses are going to fall again."
I lay on the floor beside him.
"They're gone."
"The bad man got out."
He knew too much.
Kids always do.
"Police are looking for him."
"Will Elena stay?"
I looked at her.
She nodded.
"As long as you want."
Noah crawled into my arms.
Then he whispered, "Uncle Julian told the tattoo man where I would stand."
Froze.
"When?"
"Before people came."
"You saw them together earlier?"
He nodded.
"In Grandpa's room."
My father had been dead six years.
His private study remained locked.
Only family keys opened it.
Mara searched the room.
Behind a portrait, she found a modern electronic panel wired into the old wall safe.
Someone had been using my father's study as a hidden operations room.
Inside the safe was a blue leather ledger.
Adrian's proof.
The first page listed offshore payments from Vale Security.
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The final page contained one handwritten note:
JULIAN ISN'T THE ONE GIVING THE ORDERS.
