Beneath the Billionaire Mask - Chapter 11: Chapter 11

Midtown Manhattan – 7:30 AM
Blackwood Private Vaults, Lower Level
Elena stood in front of the steel box Evelyn Blackwood had rented three months before her death.
The keycard Adrian gave her trembled in her hand.
She’d barely slept. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Evelyn’s face in that photo—the last image before everything shattered.
The vault attendant gave a polite nod, then stepped aside.
“I’ll be outside,” he said. “Fifteen minutes.”
Elena waited until the door clicked shut.
Then she slid the keycard into the lock.
The green light blinked. The box hissed open.
Inside wasn’t much.
Just a small black notebook, wrapped in red silk, and an envelope with Elena’s name written in clean, elegant script.
Her breath caught.
She hadn’t known Evelyn. Not really.
But somehow, this felt inevitable—as if the woman had been waiting for her all along.
Elena opened the letter.
Elena,
If you’re reading this, then one of two things has happened: either Adrian finally stopped pretending he could outrun the truth… or you were brave enough to follow it.
You’re a journalist. I’ve read your work. I know what it costs to chase shadows no one else wants to name.
But this isn’t just Adrian’s story. It’s mine. And it’s yours now, too.
Marcus isn’t the architect. He’s the diversion.
Julius Grant and a council within the original board—Veritas’s real founders—used the Foundation as a cover. Not just for off-shore laundering. But for choosing who lives… and who vanishes.
You need to find the ledger. Not the digital one. The original. I hid it somewhere Adrian would never look—where he buried his guilt.
My name will be dragged through mud. Let it be. But protect him. Even from himself.
And Elena? Don’t let them rewrite me.
—Evelyn
Elena swallowed the lump rising in her throat. Her hands were shaking.
She turned to the black notebook.
Inside: names. Dozens of them.
Some crossed out.
Others with notes beside them. Amounts. Dates. Places.
One stuck out immediately:
Valeria Cruz — $750,000 wire transfer — “silenced”
Her mother’s name.
Elena’s vision blurred.
She flipped through the pages. On the very last one, in Evelyn’s handwriting:
Veritas doesn’t erase people. It reassigns them.
And if you’re not careful, they’ll reassign you, too.
Blackwood Tower – Boardroom – Same Morning
Adrian stood at the head of the glass conference table.
The board members shifted in their seats, eyes narrowed, postures defensive.
“Let me be clear,” he said, voice cold and commanding. “The Foundation’s books have been reopened. And any account flagged by Evelyn, directly or indirectly, is now under federal review.”
A murmur rippled across the room.
Julius Grant’s empty seat sat at the far end.
A ghost.
Or a threat.
“Some of you think this will blow over,” Adrian continued. “That I’ll take the fall. That Marcus Vale will resurface and distract the press long enough for you to move your assets offshore.”
He leaned forward.
“But this ends with the truth. And I don’t care how much blood it takes to get there.”
One of the members—a woman in her sixties with gray eyes and a colder smile—cleared her throat.
“And if the truth leads to you, Mr. Blackwood?”
Adrian didn’t flinch.
“Then let it.”
Safehouse Rooftop – Same Time
Elena stepped onto the roof with the notebook in her hand.
She’d spent the cab ride here flipping between numbness and rage. Her mother’s name. The money. The note: silenced.
She didn’t know what it meant yet.
But she would.
Her phone buzzed.
Blocked number.
Again.
This time, a voice message.
She played it.
“You’re getting closer, Elena. But you don’t know the cost yet. Tell Adrian to stop digging. Or we’ll exhume everything you buried too.”
The message ended with a click.
Then a new photo came in.
Elena.
At her mother’s funeral.
Someone had been watching then
Blackwood Private Vaults – 7:34 AM
Elena sat on the cold bench inside the vault chamber, Evelyn’s notebook open on her lap, her hands trembling over the inked names that mapped an invisible war. She was no longer just chasing a story. She was buried in it. Bound to it.
Her mother’s name burned on the page.
Valeria Cruz – $750,000 wire transfer – silenced.
The word “silenced” throbbed like a gunshot in her ears.
Elena hadn’t seen that money. Her mother died broke—at least publicly. Valeria had been a fearless immigration attorney, working class cases others wouldn’t touch. No secrets. No debts. No enemies.
At least, that’s what Elena believed for years.
But if her name was in Evelyn’s notebook… something had happened.
And someone made sure it was never spoken about again.
She flipped further, desperately searching for context. Most of the entries were coded—abbreviations, foreign account numbers, partial aliases. But a few names stood out.
• E. Monroe – classified – relocated (2016)
• C. Dante – “too vocal” – terminated
• J. Grant – asset handler / defector?
And beneath all of it, Evelyn’s note:
Veritas is not one entity. It’s a network of leverage. A parasite.
It survives by making good people disappear—quietly, legally, completely.
And Adrian doesn’t even know the half of it.
A door buzzed outside.
Fifteen minutes were up.
Elena tucked the letter into her coat and clutched the notebook like a lifeline. As she left the vault, her spine stiffened.
No more tiptoeing.
No more second-guessing.
If Veritas was rewriting the truth, she was going to steal the pen back.
Blackwood Tower – Executive Boardroom – 8:12 AM
The glass walls of the boardroom gleamed under the morning sun. Adrian stood alone at the head of the long obsidian table as the last board member took their seat.
All eyes were on him. A room full of calculated power and concealed ambition.
He didn’t bother with pleasantries.
“I’ve reopened the internal audit of the Foundation’s offshore portfolios,” Adrian began. “Some of the files Evelyn flagged before her death were buried behind three layers of encrypted accounts. Names I’ve never authorized. Disbursements I’ve never signed.”
There was a twitch in one man’s jaw.
Another narrowed her eyes.
One woman sipped her coffee with practiced indifference.
Adrian let the silence hang like a guillotine.
“You knew,” he said flatly. “At least some of you. That Marcus was laundering donations through shell firms. That Veritas still existed in fragments—if not directly under your control, then in your protection.”
He turned and clicked the projector remote.
A screen behind him came to life. Transaction histories. Wire transfers. Cross-referenced names.
Evelyn’s notes had helped him build a map—and it wasn’t just damning. It was coordinated.
“I’m giving you one chance,” Adrian said. “Come forward. Tell me how deep this goes. Or I burn it all.”
One man stood. Mr. Kesler—finance chair.
“Are you threatening us, Adrian?”
“I’m warning you.”
Kesler sneered. “This is a foundation, not a regime. You can’t fire the board.”
“I can dissolve it,” Adrian said. “Effective immediately. The bylaws allow for emergency revocation under ethical compromise.”
“You’d destroy your own empire.”
“I’d rather burn it than let it poison anyone else.”
Another voice cut through the tension.
“Is that what Evelyn would have wanted?”
Everyone turned.
Julius Grant.
He stepped into the boardroom like he owned it, calm and clean-shaven, no trace of his midnight disappearance. His voice was smooth, controlled.
Adrian’s eyes narrowed.
“You’re done hiding?”
“I was never hiding,” Julius said. “Just waiting for the right time.”
He walked up to the table and dropped a single folder.
“Everything you’ve found so far?” He tapped it. “It’s just the first layer.”
Adrian didn’t move.
“I know what Evelyn gave Elena,” Julius said. “And I know what’s in the notebook.”
Adrian stiffened. “If you hurt her—”
“I haven’t touched her,” Julius said. “But someone will. Unless you start listening.”
He leaned forward.
“Veritas doesn’t want to destroy you, Adrian. They want to inherit you.”
Uptown Safehouse – 9:27 AM
Elena slammed the notebook on the table in front of Julia, who had arrived after a flurry of panicked texts.
Julia flipped through it, her face draining of color.
“Elena,” she whispered, “this is suicide.”
“No,” Elena said. “This is justice.”
She pointed to the name.
“My mother’s in here, Julia. She was targeted. Marked. Paid off or threatened—I don’t know yet. But someone made sure her voice disappeared.”
Julia looked up. “You think Veritas had her killed?”
“I think Veritas kills people quietly. Maybe they fake deaths. Maybe they frame them. All I know is, I found the one truth I wasn’t ready for.”
Her voice cracked.
“This was never just Adrian’s story. They’ve been in my life longer than I realized.”
Blackwood Tower – Rooftop – 10:31 AM
Adrian stepped out onto the rooftop helipad. His head was spinning.
Julius’s final words still rang in his ears.
“The only way to survive Veritas… is to give them something bigger to bury.”
What did that mean?
A soft chime vibrated in his pocket.
A message.
From Evelyn.
Timestamped a year ago. Just now delivered.
Adrian—if Julius ever turns, don’t play defense. Go on record. Expose everything. Even me.
It’s the only way to stop them.
And tell Elena… she was never supposed to be part of this. But if she is, protect her like you couldn’t protect me.
He stared at the screen.
And then the sky cracked.
A sound—sharp, mechanical—split the air.
A drone hovered above the building.
And hanging from it…
A banner, unfurling in the wind:
“TICK TOCK, BLACKWOOD. MIDNIGHT IS COMING.”
Blackwood Tower – Rooftop – 10:33 AM
The drone zipped away as quickly as it had come, swallowed by the Manhattan skyline.
Adrian didn’t chase it.
He didn’t even move.
His eyes stayed fixed on the unraveling banner still caught in the wind:
“TICK TOCK, BLACKWOOD. MIDNIGHT IS COMING.”
He heard footsteps behind him. Familiar. Unhurried.
“Elena,” he said without turning.
She stepped beside him, her face pale and strained, one hand gripping her coat as if she might fall apart without it.
“I know what happened to my mother,” she said.
Adrian turned to her slowly.
“Elena—”
“She took a case,” she interrupted, voice raw. “One nobody else would touch. A missing Dominican nurse. No body. No prints. Just a journal she left behind about abuse in a private Manhattan hospital—funded, coincidentally, by the Blackwood Foundation.”
Adrian stiffened.
“She was contacted by someone using the name Orion,” Elena continued. “Offered protection. Legal backing. Then, just like that… she dropped the case. And one month later, she was dead.”
She pulled Evelyn’s notebook from her bag and held it up.
“She was silenced, Adrian. Evelyn knew. She kept a list.”
His jaw clenched. “Let me see it.”
Elena’s grip tightened. “You’ll want to burn it.”
“I won’t.”
“You’ll want to protect me.”
“I already do.”
Their eyes locked—grief, fury, and a terrifying kind of understanding passing silently between them.
“I don’t know who to trust anymore,” she whispered.
Adrian looked down. “You shouldn’t trust me.”
She didn’t move.
“I’m not the man Evelyn thought I’d become,” he said. “I’ve made deals. Looked away when it suited the mission. I thought I was building something clean from something rotten—but the rot’s still here. In me.”
She stepped closer.
“No,” she said. “It’s not. I’ve seen what you’ve done—who you’ve helped. That doesn’t come from rot. That comes from someone who’s still trying.”
He closed his eyes, the weight of years pressing down.
“I don’t know how to win this, Elena.”
Her hand found his.
“Then we lose together. But not in silence.”
Midnight
Veritas HQ – Undisclosed Location
The room was lit only by screens—hundreds of them.
Faces. Names. Accounts. Movements.
In the center, Julius Grant leaned against the table, watching a live feed from a hidden camera—inside Adrian’s penthouse.
He watched Elena lean into Adrian’s chest. Watched Adrian wrap his arms around her. Watched her cry.
“How poetic,” he murmured.
Beside him, a masked figure spoke at last. A woman’s voice—smooth as smoke.
“You were right. She’s the leverage.”
Julius nodded.
“And at midnight,” he said, “she’ll make her first choice.”
The woman tilted her head.
“And if she chooses him?”
Julius smiled thinly.
“Then we end them both.”