Beneath the Billionaire Mask - Chapter 14: Chapter 14

Hudson Valley – The Burn Site – 10:14 AM
The car crunched over gravel as they turned off the main road, past a rusted gate half-eaten by ivy.
The land beyond was overgrown, but the outline of what had once been a house still held shape—stone foundation cracked by heat, metal bones of a roof rusting in silence. All that remained of Evelyn Blackwood’s final mission.
Elena stepped out first.
The smell hit her immediately—ash and something older. Memory.
Adrian followed, his face unreadable, but his hands clenched into fists at his sides.
No media had ever found this place. No drone footage. No foundation tribute.
He’d kept it hidden—for ten years.
“You never had it cleared,” she said.
“I couldn’t,” Adrian replied.
They moved carefully through the scorched remains. Broken glass crunched beneath their boots. Bits of furniture, long collapsed into blackened heaps, peeked through vines.
“She came here to intercept a courier,” Adrian said quietly. “A name. A file we never recovered. It was supposed to expose Veritas’s offshore laundering circuit. Evelyn thought it could force a federal case.”
“What happened?”
“They were waiting for her.”
He crouched beside a collapsed beam, brushing aside soot. “They set it from inside. She barely got a message out.”
Elena’s eyes scanned the walls.
Then she saw something strange—a piece of tile on the fireplace hearth that wasn’t burned. It had been protected by something. A metal panel, maybe.
She stepped closer, brushing away debris.
Behind the tile was a hidden niche, just deep enough to fit a hand.
“Elena?”
“I think she left something.”
She reached in slowly—and her fingers closed around cold plastic.
A USB drive.
Old. Scorched. But intact.
She held it out.
Adrian stared at it like it might detonate.
“Let’s take it back,” he said. “I don’t trust what’s on it out here.”
But Elena didn’t move.
“Adrian,” she said slowly, eyes still locked on the hearth.
“What is it?”
“There’s something carved here.”
She stepped back, revealing the faint lines scraped into the tile under where the USB had been hidden. Not etched, not artistic—scratched in desperation.
One word.
LIAR.
Back at the Safehouse – 1:03 PM
The USB hissed as the laptop tried to read it. The casing had partially melted on one side, but Adrian’s system was built for recovery.
A few seconds later, folders bloomed across the screen.
• EMB–INTEL–CLASSIFIED
• VALE–TRANSACTION–FILES
• BLACKWOOD–INTERNAL–CROSSCHECK
Elena clicked the last one.
A video loaded.
Static. Then Evelyn’s face—tight, grim, illuminated by emergency lights.
She was scared.
“If you’re watching this… I’m dead. And if you’re Adrian, I’m sorry. But you need to hear this.”
“Someone inside the Foundation is leaking names. Not to the press—to Veritas. I traced it back to a shell company under our own accounts.”
“I confronted him. He didn’t deny it.”
Elena’s heart pounded.
“It was Marcus. But he wasn’t working alone. He said someone gave him access—someone who wanted you destroyed from within.”
The video shook. Gunfire in the distance.
“I think they know I’m here. I don’t know if this will reach you. But—”
She hesitated. Looked off-screen.
“—Don’t trust Julius.”
The screen cut to black.
Adrian stared in silence.
“She tried to tell me,” he whispered.
But Elena wasn’t looking at him anymore.
She was looking at the final file still unopened.
Titled simply:
JULIUS_GRANT_CONTRACT.pdf
Elsewhere – Midtown Manhattan – Same Time
Julius stood at a hotel window, watching the streets far below.
His phone buzzed once.
A single message from an encrypted number:
“They found it.”
Julius didn’t react.
He just reached into his jacket and pulled out a lighter.
Then calmly lit a matchbook bearing the Blackwood Foundation crest.
And dropped it into the hotel trash bin.
Safehouse – Study – 1:37 PM
Elena sat frozen, her fingers hovering over the final unopened file:
JULIUS_GRANT_CONTRACT.pdf
Adrian stood behind her, shoulders stiff with fury and disbelief. The name Julius echoed like a curse in the silent room.
“He was Evelyn’s handler,” Adrian said, voice low. “She trusted him.”
Elena clicked the file.
It opened into a scanned document — nearly forty pages of legal jargon and buried clauses. But it didn’t take long for the rot to show.
Client: Veritas
Consultant: Julius Grant
Scope of Work: Infiltration of Blackwood Foundation Infrastructure; Strategic Compromise of Key Witnesses; Leak Coordination
Payment Terms: Discretionary disbursement via shell accounts (see Appendix B)
And in the signature block, in stark digital ink:
Julius Grant
Dated: Four weeks before Evelyn’s death.
Adrian’s breath left him like a punch to the gut.
Elena turned to him. “She tried to warn you. She said not to trust him.”
“I didn’t,” he said bitterly. “But I never expected this.”
“She called him family.”
“So did I.”
The silence that followed was brutal.
Adrian rubbed his jaw, pacing now. “We always thought Veritas operated like a shadow army—faceless, collective. But this… this was a contract. A business arrangement.”
“That means they don’t just want to silence you,” Elena said. “They want to profit off your fall.”
“And if Julius is still inside—” Adrian stopped. “He’ll know we’ve seen this. He’ll move fast.”
Elena nodded. “Then we move faster.”
Later – Safehouse War Room – 3:02 PM
Adrian activated a private uplink to his last loyal digital security contractor, a man known only as Boone. A voice filtered through the encrypted comm line.
“You said no contact unless you wanted to go nuclear,” Boone muttered.
“I do,” Adrian replied.
He sent the contract file. “I want everything connected to these shell accounts traced and leaked. Quietly. We bleed them first.”
“Veritas will retaliate.”
“Let them.”
Across the City – Blackwood Global HQ – 3:37 PM
Julius entered the executive lounge with calm efficiency, coffee in one hand, a briefcase in the other. He nodded to the board members he passed, smiled at the interns who didn’t know better.
But when he reached his office, his smile slipped.
The door was ajar.
Inside, the lights were on. The windows sealed.
A note sat on his desk.
You were her handler.
Now we’re handling you.
—E
His pulse ticked once. Then again.
He reached for the hidden Glock beneath the desk drawer.
But it was already gone.
Safehouse – That Evening
Adrian sat alone in the darkened hall outside the war room, head in his hands.
Everything was unraveling faster than he could contain it. The ghosts, the betrayals, the war he’d built in the shadows for so long… it was all crashing into the light.
Elena appeared quietly beside him.
He didn’t look at her.
“I always thought if I could punish them, it would feel like justice,” he said. “But all I feel is exhaustion.”
Elena lowered beside him. “Justice doesn’t erase loss. It just gives it shape.”
He finally looked at her.
“Do you think she hated me? At the end?”
“No,” Elena said. “I think she loved you enough to die trying to protect what you still believed in.”
A long, aching silence passed.
Then Elena stood.
“Get some sleep, Adrian.”
He blinked. “You’re not?”
“I’m going to write.”
He raised a brow.
“I thought the story was buried.”
Elena turned, just before walking down the hall.
“Not anymore.”
Safehouse – Midnight
The night was quiet—but it wasn’t peace.
Elena sat at her desk, fingers dancing over her keyboard, her screen filled with code, archived files, and redacted names. She wasn’t writing a story. Not yet.
She was building a case.
Each folder Evelyn had hidden was a breadcrumb. And now that the contract exposed Julius, it meant something larger was coming.
Not just betrayal.
Strategy.
She paused at one file—marked only with a single name:
E. Reyes.
She clicked.
A dozen encrypted audio logs populated the screen, all dated after Evelyn’s supposed death.
She blinked.
That shouldn’t be possible.
Then one file opened itself.
“If anyone finds this… I failed.”
Elena froze.
The voice wasn’t Evelyn’s.
It was Julius.
“I tried to control the burn. But the girl… she wasn’t supposed to make contact with Vale’s courier. She got the name. We lost the asset.”
“And now Blackwood’s looking in places that should’ve stayed buried.”
The voice cut out.
But Elena’s mind didn’t.
The courier.
The missing file.
The name Evelyn died for.
Elena opened a notepad.
Courier.
Shell accounts.
Vale’s hidden partner.
Reyes?
— Who are you really?
Behind her, Adrian’s voice broke the silence.
“You found something.”
She turned. “I think Evelyn did more than leave evidence. I think she left a trail only someone like me could finish.”
Adrian approached slowly.
“You mean someone who’s not afraid of the truth?”
“No,” Elena said, her eyes shining. “Someone who’s willing to burn for it.”
Manhattan – Top-Secret Veritas Holding – Same Time
Julius watched the surveillance footage of Elena from a remote feed.
She was close. Too close.
He turned to Marcus Vale, lounging across from him with a glass of wine in hand.
“She won’t stop,” Julius said.
“Then distract her,” Marcus replied, swirling his drink. “Make her chase the wrong truth long enough for the right one to vanish.”
“And if that doesn’t work?”
Marcus leaned forward, eyes glittering.
“Then we remind Adrian what it feels like to lose someone who believes in him.”
Safehouse – 2:27 AM
Elena stood in front of the mirror in the guest bathroom, the harsh fluorescent lights overhead humming faintly. Her reflection looked back at her—sharp eyes, tight jaw, exhaustion written in the curve of her shoulders.
But that wasn’t what made her pause.
It was the flicker of doubt in her chest. The whisper.
What if you’re wrong about him?
She gripped the edge of the sink.
No.
Not again.
Not after what she’d seen—heard. Evelyn’s voice. Julius’s betrayal. The lies cloaked in contracts and loyalty.
She knew who the enemy was.
She just didn’t know what kind of war they were about to start.
Safehouse – Downstairs – Same Time
Adrian sat alone in the war room, Evelyn’s encrypted drive beside him.
He hadn’t said it aloud, but he knew what Elena was piecing together.
The name Evelyn had uncovered before her death… it wasn’t just a leak.
It was the architect.
The person pulling strings inside both Veritas and Blackwood Global.
And if Julius wasn’t the top of the chain—then someone even more dangerous still remained.
Someone watching.
Waiting.
A shadow behind the shadows.
He stared at the flashing cursor on his screen.
Then typed two words:
Initiate fallback.
Midtown Manhattan – Morning
The media trucks lined up outside Blackwood Global before sunrise.
Someone had leaked the USB files.
Not just Julius’s contract—but bits of Evelyn’s video. The Foundation’s hidden programs. The unlisted shell companies.
The entire world was now watching.
But inside a sleek black car three blocks away, Marcus Vale wasn’t worried.
He sipped his espresso and smiled faintly at the chaos on the screens.
He knew the story wasn’t over.
Because the next file he had—the one he hadn’t leaked yet—contained a name.
And that name would shatter everything Adrian still believed in.
Safehouse – Elena’s Laptop – 6:03 AM
A message pinged her inbox from an untraceable address.
Just one line:
“You’re chasing the wrong ghost, Elena. Evelyn wasn’t the first. — M”
She stared at the screen, heart turning cold.
Then clicked the attachment.
One image.
A grainy surveillance photo.
A woman who looked eerily familiar.
Not Evelyn.
But someone else from Adrian’s past.
Someone she didn’t know existed.