Beneath the Billionaire Mask - Chapter 19: Chapter 19

Undisclosed Emergency Route – Piedra Ciega – 11:42 PM
The tunnel was narrow and hot with panic. Elena moved in silence, the badge clenched in her fist like it could somehow wake the dead.
Her father’s name. On a file she was never meant to see.
Everything felt like fiction.
Beside her, Adrian said nothing. He walked with purpose, but his eyes had lost their usual control. He wasn’t hiding anymore. Whatever this moment was—it had cracked him open.
And she wasn’t sure if she hated him more for what he’d hidden…
…or for how badly she still wanted to believe him.
Ahead, Liana kicked open a sealed hatch. Fresh air spilled through like salvation, but no one moved.
Elena turned. “Tell me the truth. All of it. No more riddles.”
Adrian stopped.
“Your father was part of Project Blackwood,” he said, voice hollow. “It was created to track high-threat financial networks—cartels, political launders, international traffickers. But halfway through, it was hijacked.”
“By who?”
“Marcus. And others like him. They saw the data we were collecting and realized the power it held. Leverage. Blackmail. Control.”
Elena’s throat tightened. “And my father?”
“He was one of the last clean agents. He discovered Marcus was selling intel to foreign buyers. He compiled evidence, prepared to go public.”
She knew how the story ended.
“They killed him.”
Adrian met her eyes.
“No. They gave him a choice. Stay silent, or disappear.”
Elena’s world blurred. “You mean he’s alive?”
Adrian hesitated.
And that was enough.
“You don’t know,” she breathed. “You don’t know what happened to him.”
“I know what I’ve found. And I know Marcus wants that file burned from existence.”
Tears stung behind her eyes. The grief was no longer distant—it was violent. Loud. A storm in her ribs.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“Because I didn’t want to break what you had left of him.”
She backed away. “You’re not protecting me. You’re protecting you. From guilt. From accountability. From the fact that I was right to come after you in the first place.”
Adrian’s face didn’t flinch. “I’ve never denied what I am, Elena. I just hoped you’d see there was more to it than the mask.”
“And now I don’t know what I see.”
Footsteps echoed down the tunnel.
Liana raised her weapon. “We’re out of time.”
New York City – 4:00 AM – Julia King’s Apartment
Julia didn’t sleep.
Not after that call.
She paced the living room in her robe, staring down at her phone as if willing it to ring again. She’d already left three encrypted voice notes for Elena. No response.
She tried Adrian’s assistant. Dead line.
Then her private terminal lit up.
Message received. Sender: Unknown. Subject: PROJECT CRUZ
Her heart slammed in her chest. She clicked.
One image loaded.
A photo of Guillermo Cruz.
Alive.
Older. In shadows. Eyes sunken but unmistakable.
Attached was one line:
“He’s not dead. He’s hiding.”
Julia’s breath hitched.
“And if Elena keeps digging—he’ll be forced to choose: her… or the mission.”
Piedra Ciega – Surface Clearing – 12:08 AM
The compound’s outer rim came into view. Helicopters circled like vultures.
Adrian, Liana, and Elena crouched behind the last barrier of cover. The flash drive was secured, but the hard copy files were still inside—and time was bleeding out.
“We can’t outrun this,” Liana said. “They have our exits, our comms, our gear.”
Adrian looked to Elena.
“If we split up, you’ll have a shot at disappearing with the drive.”
“I’m not running,” she said.
“Elena—”
“No.” She stood her ground. “You told me to decide what I could live with. So I’m deciding.”
He stared at her.
“I’m not leaving you to clean up a mess I helped uncover. We either take Marcus down together—” she swallowed hard—“or we both go down knowing we tried.”
Adrian’s chest rose slowly.
And then he reached into his coat and handed her one final file.
“This is the one Marcus doesn’t know we kept.”
Elena looked down.
A file marked:
CODE NAME: VIREX – SUBJECT: G.C.
Her father’s last mission.
Her hand tightened.
“We finish this,” she said.
Undisclosed Emergency Route – Piedra Ciega – 11:42 PM
Elena walked behind Adrian in silence, her steps echoing off the concrete like accusations. The tunnel air felt thick—too warm, too shallow, like it couldn’t hold all the things left unsaid between them.
The flash drive weighed heavily in her pocket. But it was nothing compared to the ache curling behind her ribs.
Her father.
The name alone felt foreign now. She’d spent years grieving him. Mourning a man she believed had died quietly, forgotten, and maybe even ashamed.
And now?
Now he was a ghost that lived in sealed files and surveillance photos. A man tangled in the very conspiracy she thought she was unraveling.
A man Adrian Blackwood knew about—and kept from her.
She stopped walking.
“Don’t lie to me again.”
Adrian turned.
The dim emergency lights painted him in long shadows. He looked less like the man who’d cornered her in a penthouse and more like someone unraveling in real time—suit torn at the sleeve, blood dried on his knuckles, truth spilling from his lips too late.
“I didn’t lie,” he said. “I waited.”
Elena’s eyes burned. “Do you even hear yourself? That’s not nobility, Adrian. That’s control. You don’t get to decide when I learn my own history.”
“You weren’t ready.”
Her laugh was sharp, bitter. “Don’t you dare tell me what I can handle.”
He stepped toward her, but she flinched.
And it stopped him cold.
That small recoil hurt more than any slap.
“Elena…”
She cut him off. “When were you going to tell me he might be alive? When it was convenient? When you could weaponize it?”
His silence was damning.
She shoved past him and kept walking. “If you want me to trust you, stop acting like the villain you claim not to be.”
Behind her, his voice dropped low—so low it was almost broken.
“Maybe I am the villain.”
She paused, back still to him.
“Then stop pretending you can save me,” she whispered.
Surveillance Hatch – Overlooking Surface Exit – 11:59 PM
Liana crouched beside a narrow opening, peering through a small slit toward the jungle perimeter. Drones buzzed overhead. The enemy was getting closer. The sound of tech boots crunching the earth filled the silence between thunder and strategy.
“They’re not here for a sweep,” she said. “They’re here for extraction. Files and bodies.”
Elena stepped up beside her, emotion buried beneath steel.
“Then we give them neither.”
Liana raised an eyebrow. “You’re a journalist, not a soldier.”
Elena didn’t blink. “I’m whatever I need to be tonight.”
Adrian joined them, his jaw tense.
“I’ll draw them away. You and Liana head for the old radio tower. There’s a backup transmitter buried inside. It’s analog—pre-digital—Marcus can’t trace it.”
“No.” Elena’s voice cracked. “We stay together.”
“You won’t survive if we do.”
“I won’t survive if you don’t.”
They stared at each other—caught in that space between what was true and what was necessary.
Then he handed her a sealed envelope.
“If I don’t make it,” he said quietly, “this goes to Julia King. No one else.”
She took it with shaking fingers. “Don’t talk like you’re not making it.”
“I always talk like that,” he said, almost smiling. “But you never listened.”
Encrypted Archive – Lower Sublevel, 12:08 AM
While Liana prepped the exit route, Elena ducked into the vault once more. The flash drive was burning in her pocket. But it wasn’t enough.
She wanted to see it for herself.
The file labeled VIREX – Subject: G.C.
She opened it.
Inside were field reports. Handwritten notes. Obituaries with classified watermarks. Surveillance photos from 2013.
Then a transcript—one that stopped her heart.
DATE: August 19, 2016
LOCATION: Prague, Safehouse 09
SUBJECT: Cruz, Guillermo – DEBRIEF
“I’m not afraid of dying. I’m afraid of what they’ll do to my daughter when they find out she’s mine. She’s got her mother’s fire and none of my caution. Keep her away from the file. She’ll never stop once she starts.”
Elena’s knees gave out.
She sat on the cold floor, the file trembling in her grip. Her throat tightened around a sob she didn’t want to give power to.
He had tried to protect her.
Even in hiding. Even knowing the monsters circling.
“Damn you,” she whispered. “You loved me from a distance and left me nothing but ruins.”
Meanwhile – Marcus Vale’s Location – Unknown
Marcus watched the Piedra Ciega feed flicker and blink.
“She’s seen it,” the agent beside him confirmed.
Marcus leaned back in his chair, hands steepled.
“Then everything is falling into place.”
“You really think she’ll turn on him?”
He smirked.
“She already has. She just doesn’t know it yet.”
Back at Piedra Ciega – Perimeter Clearing – 12:27 AM
The air was thick with tension and tropical heat. Drones scanned the edges of the forest while boots hit the compound hard and fast.
Adrian stood alone.
Elena was gone—already headed for the tower with Liana.
And that’s exactly how he wanted it.
He pulled his phone and hit the final failsafe.
The vault would collapse in ten minutes.
He couldn’t let Marcus get it.
His finger hovered over the final command.
“Initiate BLACKOUT PROTOCOL?”
A pause.
Then a voice from behind.
“You really thought I’d let you have the last word?”
Adrian turned—and there he was.
Marcus Vale.
Slick suit. Calm menace. And a pistol aimed right at Adrian’s heart.