Beneath the Billionaire Mask - Chapter 54: Chapter 54
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Bogotá, Colombia – Abandoned UNX Facility (Depth Marker: 600m) – 1:11 PM
The elevator groaned as it descended past the known infrastructure of Bogotá. Past the sanctioned metro levels. Past where maps even bothered to label.
Below them, the darkness thickened—until it wasn’t just absence of light, but pressure.
Adrian stood to Elena’s left, his hand resting just inches from the weapon holstered under his jacket. He hadn’t said a word since they entered the shaft. Not about the risk. Not about the memories. Not even about the file still encrypted in her bloodstream.
Julia stood at the console, overriding security layers one by one.
“According to this,” she murmured, “this place was decommissioned fifteen years ago. But your father’s logs say otherwise.”
Elena didn’t move. “He never decommissions. He just rebrands.”
With a final hiss, the doors opened.
They stepped into a corridor built of steel and secrets.
UNX Subterranean Vault 7 – Inner Core – 1:18 PM
The walls were lined with old terminals—half offline, half whispering digital breath like ghosts waiting to be summoned.
“This place is older than I thought,” Julia murmured, brushing dust off an interface. “This isn’t just a lab. It’s a memory prison.”
Elena moved forward slowly, pulled by instinct more than knowledge. Her fingers brushed a console, and the lights flickered.
ACCESS GRANTED: CRUZ PROTOCOL OVERRIDE
A pulse.
From the walls.
From the floor.
From inside her.
Adrian took a step forward. “Elena…”
But it was too late.
The screen flared white.
And Elena collapsed.
Neural Link Initiated Virtual Construct: CRUZ LOCK
The world snapped into clarity and distortion.
She was standing in a replica of her childhood bedroom. Everything untouched. The books on the shelf. The crack on the wall from the earthquake. The music box her father had given her the night her mother disappeared.
A voice echoed through the space.
“Welcome to the vault, Elena.”
She turned sharply.
Her father’s holographic form stood by the window.
“Dad?”
“This isn’t really me,” he said. “Just a neural simulation. A safety net I created in case your consciousness ever aligned with the buried code.”
“You put code inside me?” she asked.
“No. I grew it. Your DNA was the foundation. But the rest…” he gestured to the room, “…is you.”
Elena stepped back, the walls flickering now—her memories warping.
Her mother crying on the phone. Her father yelling in a language she didn’t recognize. Files hidden in the piano. A room beneath their kitchen that never existed until now.
“You weren’t meant to carry this alone,” her father said. “But the world left us no choice.”
She gritted her teeth. “What the hell is Project Nightfall?”
“The answer… or the end. And only you can decide which.”
Suddenly, the floor beneath her shook.
WARNING: INTRUSION DETECTED IN NEURAL CONSTRUCT
EXTERNAL ENTITY BREACH ATTEMPTING MEMORY HIJACK
The hologram of her father began to distort.
“They found you—inside and out. You need to wake up, Elena. Now!”
“Wait!” she shouted. “What am I supposed to do? Who am I really?”
“You’re the daughter of a monster… and the key to ending the system that made him.”
The room shattered like glass.
UNX Facility – Main Floor – 1:31 PM
Adrian caught Elena’s body as it convulsed. Her pulse raced beneath his fingers.
Julia cursed. “Her vitals are spikingbrainwaves are off the charts.”
“She’s fighting something,” Adrian growled. “Or someone.”
Suddenly, her eyes flew open.
But they weren’t her eyes anymore.
Not exactly.
“Elena?” Adrian asked carefully.
She turned toward him.
And smiled faintly.
“I remember everything.”
UNX Facility – Main Floor – 1:33 PM
Adrian froze.
The woman in front of him looked like Elena, breathed like her, even bled like her—there was a gash on her arm from when she collapsed. But the tilt of her head, the steadiness in her voice… it felt off.
“Elena?” he asked again, more gently this time.
She blinked once, slowly. Then twice—faster, like waking from a long sleep. Her hand rose to her temple, fingers trembling as if decoding something she couldn’t see.
“I remember him,” she whispered. “My father… he didn’t die clean. He died betrayed.”
Julia stared at her tablet, fingers flying. “Her neural wave patterns just stabilized. But there’s a second overlay. A personality shell. Adrian, she’s not just remembering—she’s processing another layer of identity.”
“Tell me what he showed you,” Adrian said, stepping forward.
Elena turned toward the central terminal. Her voice was calm—but electric with something deep, rising.
“He built Nightfall as a shadow of the world he couldn’t fix. A failsafe system. One that didn’t depend on politics or armies. One that could erase power by exposing truth.” She paused. “It was beautiful. And terrifying.”
“And the Directive?” Julia asked. “What’s Phase Four?”
Elena hesitated. Her eyes met Adrian’s.
“It’s not a shutdown.”
She tapped a command into the panel beside her.
OVERRIDE CODE: CRUZ-DIRECTIVE-739
MANUAL CONTROL MODE ENABLED
QUERY: ACTIVATE GLOBAL LEAK?
“It’s the kill switch,” she said. “For every lie built into global systems since Project Genesis. Offshore accounts. Shadow funding. Assassination orders. Even false diplomacy.”
Adrian’s breath caught. “If you trigger it—”
“World leaders fall. CEOs. Banks. Black sites. Secret laws. Everything.”
The screen paused on a blinking red command:
RELEASE DATA? YES / NO
Julia’s voice was tight. “That’s not just truth. That’s obliteration.”
But Elena didn’t press it.
Not yet.
“Someone else was in the vault,” she said suddenly, eyes narrowing. “While I was inside… I felt them. Watching me. Trying to steer the memory.”
Adrian stiffened. “An internal hijack?”
“No,” she said. “Something worse.”
Her voice dropped.
“He left someone behind. And they’ve been waiting for me to unlock the rest.”
Before Adrian could speak, the wall behind them shuddered. Lights dimmed. A sharp, metallic ping echoed through the corridor.
Julia checked the feed.
“Motion sensors tripped,” she said. “Level 2 breach. Someone’s inside the facility.”
Elena’s voice turned cold. “They followed me here.”
Elsewhere – UNX Facility – Surveillance Shaft
A figure moved with precision through the dark.
Clad in matte black, face obscured by a smooth helmet, they paused only once—to place a device on a junction box. The lights above them flickered.
The visor display lit up.
OBJECTIVE: ACQUIRE HOST
SECONDARY: NEUTRALIZE BLACKWOOD
The figure turned toward the central elevator.
Then disappeared.
UNX Facility – Main Floor – 1:39 PM
Elena’s fingers hovered over the YES/NO prompt.
She wasn’t trembling.
“I think my father knew he wouldn’t survive Nightfall,” she said. “So he left a question behind.”
Julia looked up. “What question?”
Elena’s gaze didn’t waver.
“If truth could destroy everything… would we still deserve to know it?”
Then, from the shadows, a soft mechanical click.
Adrian moved instantly—gun drawn, eyes scanning.
“Too late,” Elena said quietly.
The masked figure stepped into view.
“You shouldn’t have remembered,” the voice behind the mask said. Low. Distorted. Calm.
“And now… we’ll have to make you forget again.”
UNX Facility – Main Floor – 1:40 PM
Adrian stepped in front of Elena instinctively, shielding her with his body, gun leveled on the figure now fully visible in the flickering light.
“Who sent you?” he demanded.
The intruder said nothing. The reflective helmet tilted slightly—then flicked left as Julia tried to angle for cover behind the console.
A small metal sphere clinked to the ground.
“EMP!” Julia shouted.
Adrian grabbed Elena and dove—seconds before the pulse detonated. The lights died. The terminals sparked. And every screen inside the room turned to static.
Including the one holding the activation prompt.
DATA LINK LOST
REBOOTING MEMORY SHELL…
“Move!” Adrian barked, pulling Elena behind a storage panel as bullets tore through the dark. The only illumination came from the rhythmic strobing of emergency backup lights—casting the corridor into a slow, nightmare flicker.
Elena’s pulse pounded in her ears. “We can’t lose that file.”
“We won’t,” Adrian hissed. “But first we stay alive.”
The masked attacker advanced through the corridor with calculated ease, a silencer affixed to the weapon. The shots made soft coughs of death as they punched holes into the control station Julia had just abandoned.
Then the figure stopped.
“Elena Cruz,” the voice echoed again. “You weren’t supposed to remember. You weren’t supposed to awaken.”
Elena stepped from cover.
Adrian hissed, “What the hell are you doing?”
“Buying us ten seconds,” she replied, then raised her hands.
“I remember everything,” she said aloud. “Including you.”
The figure froze.
“You were my father’s contingency,” Elena continued. “His shadow protocol. You were meant to kill me if I failed to hide the key, weren’t you?”
A pause.
Then, for the first time, the masked figure spoke without distortion.
A woman’s voice. Quiet. Precise.
“I was meant to protect you, Elena. Until the day you became a threat.”
Julia, crawling behind the attacker, whispered over comms: “I have the pulse jammer. Give me a signal.”
Adrian met Elena’s eyes.
She gave a small nod—and moved.
In the blink of an eye, Adrian opened fire. The assassin deflected, staggered—but Julia surged up from behind and slammed the jammer into the figure’s back. The pulse jolted through the armor, and the masked woman fell with a muffled grunt.
Elena stood over her, heart racing.
“Who are you?”
The woman’s voice was faint. “I… was your godmother. Cruz trusted me more than anyone else. But your awakening… it’s a risk to everything. If you trigger Nightfall—”
“I’ll end the machine that turned my family into ghosts,” Elena said coldly.
Behind her, the main screen sparked back to life.
The data hadn’t been lost.
Only delayed.
UNX Facility – Final Panel – 2:03 PM
Julia reconnected the power core. Adrian stood guard near the unconscious attacker, who now breathed shallowly, sedated.
Elena returned to the screen.
The prompt glowed again:
RELEASE DATA?
YES / NO
She hovered over it.
Then turned to Adrian.
“Not yet,” she said. “Not until I know who’s still left playing god behind the curtain.”
She tapped a command to store the file. The screen responded:
DATA STORED – MANUAL RELEASE ENABLED ONLY WITH DNA TRIPLICATE AUTHORITY
CURRENT AUTHORIZED USERS: CRUZ / BLACKWOOD / UNKNOWN
Adrian blinked. “Unknown?”
Elena exhaled. “Someone else still holds part of the key.”
Julia narrowed her eyes. “Then we find them. Before they find us.”
UNX Facility – Main Floor – 2:05 PM
Elena sat against the cool wall, still reeling from the revelation. The vault hadn’t just shown her secrets—it had unlocked them. Her pulse was slower now, but her mind raced like thunder through a narrow canyon.
Adrian paced nearby, eyes scanning the unconscious woman they’d subdued. She’d called herself protector. But her actions—her hesitation before killing—hinted at more.
“She knew you,” he finally said. “More than she admitted.”
Elena nodded. “She was in my memories. Not just in the vault—before. I remember her at the embassy in Lisbon. She brought me candy shaped like stars. I called her Tía Mar.”
Julia blinked. “You just remembered that now?”
Elena nodded slowly. “The vault cracked something open.”
Julia moved to a data core, rewiring the backup feed. “Then it’s not just encrypted files your father buried. It’s your mind. He wove the truth into your neurons. That’s why Nightfall responds to you.”
Adrian spoke quietly. “And why they’ll stop at nothing to silence you.”
Elena’s gaze returned to the screen.
RELEASE DATA: YES / NO
AUTHORIZED USERS: CRUZ / BLACKWOOD / UNKNOWN
Unknown. The word itched at her thoughts.
“Elena,” Adrian said gently, “you don’t have to rush this. If we trigger the data now, we can’t contain it. Governments will collapse. People will die.”
“But if we don’t,” Elena whispered, “they win. Again.”
She stepped forward and placed her hand on the scanner.
USER 1: CRUZ – VERIFIED
USER 2: BLACKWOOD – VERIFIED
USER 3: PENDING DNA MATCH
Julia stepped in, stunned. “There’s a third keyholder? That means your father trusted one more person.”
Adrian’s voice was firm. “Then we find out who.”
But Elena was staring at something beyond the panel.
A blinking notification. One Julia hadn’t triggered.
A private audio file. Timestamped two weeks before her father’s death.
She pressed play.
“If you’re hearing this, it means the vault has been accessed. And that my daughter is ready. Elena, there’s a reason you were chosen. Not because you were born into my bloodline—but because you earned the truth.”
“There’s one more piece of this puzzle. I didn’t hide it in a file or a vault. I hid it in someone else. Someone who walked away from us. Someone who once swore to protect you. Her name is—”
The recording cut out. Deliberately corrupted.
Elena whispered the name that now echoed in her mind.
“Isobel.”
Adrian blinked. “Your aunt?”
Elena nodded. “She vanished after the explosion. Everyone assumed she died. But my father… he gave her the third key.”
Julia’s fingers flew over the console. “If we locate her DNA… we can unlock everything.”
But Adrian wasn’t convinced.
“And what if she doesn’t want to be found?”
The facility lights dimmed.
Then flickered back on.
A proximity alert lit up Julia’s tablet. She swore under her breath.
“They’re coming. Whoever’s left from Nightfall’s shadow division—they’ve tracked us.”
Adrian chambered a fresh round. “Then let’s make them regret it.”
Elena stood taller, her pulse steady now.
“Then let’s finish what my father started.”
The elevator groaned as it descended past the known infrastructure of Bogotá. Past the sanctioned metro levels. Past where maps even bothered to label.
Below them, the darkness thickened—until it wasn’t just absence of light, but pressure.
Adrian stood to Elena’s left, his hand resting just inches from the weapon holstered under his jacket. He hadn’t said a word since they entered the shaft. Not about the risk. Not about the memories. Not even about the file still encrypted in her bloodstream.
Julia stood at the console, overriding security layers one by one.
“According to this,” she murmured, “this place was decommissioned fifteen years ago. But your father’s logs say otherwise.”
Elena didn’t move. “He never decommissions. He just rebrands.”
With a final hiss, the doors opened.
They stepped into a corridor built of steel and secrets.
UNX Subterranean Vault 7 – Inner Core – 1:18 PM
The walls were lined with old terminals—half offline, half whispering digital breath like ghosts waiting to be summoned.
“This place is older than I thought,” Julia murmured, brushing dust off an interface. “This isn’t just a lab. It’s a memory prison.”
Elena moved forward slowly, pulled by instinct more than knowledge. Her fingers brushed a console, and the lights flickered.
ACCESS GRANTED: CRUZ PROTOCOL OVERRIDE
A pulse.
From the walls.
From the floor.
From inside her.
Adrian took a step forward. “Elena…”
But it was too late.
The screen flared white.
And Elena collapsed.
Neural Link Initiated Virtual Construct: CRUZ LOCK
The world snapped into clarity and distortion.
She was standing in a replica of her childhood bedroom. Everything untouched. The books on the shelf. The crack on the wall from the earthquake. The music box her father had given her the night her mother disappeared.
A voice echoed through the space.
“Welcome to the vault, Elena.”
She turned sharply.
Her father’s holographic form stood by the window.
“Dad?”
“This isn’t really me,” he said. “Just a neural simulation. A safety net I created in case your consciousness ever aligned with the buried code.”
“You put code inside me?” she asked.
“No. I grew it. Your DNA was the foundation. But the rest…” he gestured to the room, “…is you.”
Elena stepped back, the walls flickering now—her memories warping.
Her mother crying on the phone. Her father yelling in a language she didn’t recognize. Files hidden in the piano. A room beneath their kitchen that never existed until now.
“You weren’t meant to carry this alone,” her father said. “But the world left us no choice.”
She gritted her teeth. “What the hell is Project Nightfall?”
“The answer… or the end. And only you can decide which.”
Suddenly, the floor beneath her shook.
WARNING: INTRUSION DETECTED IN NEURAL CONSTRUCT
EXTERNAL ENTITY BREACH ATTEMPTING MEMORY HIJACK
The hologram of her father began to distort.
“They found you—inside and out. You need to wake up, Elena. Now!”
“Wait!” she shouted. “What am I supposed to do? Who am I really?”
“You’re the daughter of a monster… and the key to ending the system that made him.”
The room shattered like glass.
UNX Facility – Main Floor – 1:31 PM
Adrian caught Elena’s body as it convulsed. Her pulse raced beneath his fingers.
Julia cursed. “Her vitals are spikingbrainwaves are off the charts.”
“She’s fighting something,” Adrian growled. “Or someone.”
Suddenly, her eyes flew open.
But they weren’t her eyes anymore.
Not exactly.
“Elena?” Adrian asked carefully.
She turned toward him.
And smiled faintly.
“I remember everything.”
UNX Facility – Main Floor – 1:33 PM
Adrian froze.
The woman in front of him looked like Elena, breathed like her, even bled like her—there was a gash on her arm from when she collapsed. But the tilt of her head, the steadiness in her voice… it felt off.
“Elena?” he asked again, more gently this time.
She blinked once, slowly. Then twice—faster, like waking from a long sleep. Her hand rose to her temple, fingers trembling as if decoding something she couldn’t see.
“I remember him,” she whispered. “My father… he didn’t die clean. He died betrayed.”
Julia stared at her tablet, fingers flying. “Her neural wave patterns just stabilized. But there’s a second overlay. A personality shell. Adrian, she’s not just remembering—she’s processing another layer of identity.”
“Tell me what he showed you,” Adrian said, stepping forward.
Elena turned toward the central terminal. Her voice was calm—but electric with something deep, rising.
“He built Nightfall as a shadow of the world he couldn’t fix. A failsafe system. One that didn’t depend on politics or armies. One that could erase power by exposing truth.” She paused. “It was beautiful. And terrifying.”
“And the Directive?” Julia asked. “What’s Phase Four?”
Elena hesitated. Her eyes met Adrian’s.
“It’s not a shutdown.”
She tapped a command into the panel beside her.
OVERRIDE CODE: CRUZ-DIRECTIVE-739
MANUAL CONTROL MODE ENABLED
QUERY: ACTIVATE GLOBAL LEAK?
“It’s the kill switch,” she said. “For every lie built into global systems since Project Genesis. Offshore accounts. Shadow funding. Assassination orders. Even false diplomacy.”
Adrian’s breath caught. “If you trigger it—”
“World leaders fall. CEOs. Banks. Black sites. Secret laws. Everything.”
The screen paused on a blinking red command:
RELEASE DATA? YES / NO
Julia’s voice was tight. “That’s not just truth. That’s obliteration.”
But Elena didn’t press it.
Not yet.
“Someone else was in the vault,” she said suddenly, eyes narrowing. “While I was inside… I felt them. Watching me. Trying to steer the memory.”
Adrian stiffened. “An internal hijack?”
“No,” she said. “Something worse.”
Her voice dropped.
“He left someone behind. And they’ve been waiting for me to unlock the rest.”
Before Adrian could speak, the wall behind them shuddered. Lights dimmed. A sharp, metallic ping echoed through the corridor.
Julia checked the feed.
“Motion sensors tripped,” she said. “Level 2 breach. Someone’s inside the facility.”
Elena’s voice turned cold. “They followed me here.”
Elsewhere – UNX Facility – Surveillance Shaft
A figure moved with precision through the dark.
Clad in matte black, face obscured by a smooth helmet, they paused only once—to place a device on a junction box. The lights above them flickered.
The visor display lit up.
OBJECTIVE: ACQUIRE HOST
SECONDARY: NEUTRALIZE BLACKWOOD
The figure turned toward the central elevator.
Then disappeared.
UNX Facility – Main Floor – 1:39 PM
Elena’s fingers hovered over the YES/NO prompt.
She wasn’t trembling.
“I think my father knew he wouldn’t survive Nightfall,” she said. “So he left a question behind.”
Julia looked up. “What question?”
Elena’s gaze didn’t waver.
“If truth could destroy everything… would we still deserve to know it?”
Then, from the shadows, a soft mechanical click.
Adrian moved instantly—gun drawn, eyes scanning.
“Too late,” Elena said quietly.
The masked figure stepped into view.
“You shouldn’t have remembered,” the voice behind the mask said. Low. Distorted. Calm.
“And now… we’ll have to make you forget again.”
UNX Facility – Main Floor – 1:40 PM
Adrian stepped in front of Elena instinctively, shielding her with his body, gun leveled on the figure now fully visible in the flickering light.
“Who sent you?” he demanded.
The intruder said nothing. The reflective helmet tilted slightly—then flicked left as Julia tried to angle for cover behind the console.
A small metal sphere clinked to the ground.
“EMP!” Julia shouted.
Adrian grabbed Elena and dove—seconds before the pulse detonated. The lights died. The terminals sparked. And every screen inside the room turned to static.
Including the one holding the activation prompt.
DATA LINK LOST
REBOOTING MEMORY SHELL…
“Move!” Adrian barked, pulling Elena behind a storage panel as bullets tore through the dark. The only illumination came from the rhythmic strobing of emergency backup lights—casting the corridor into a slow, nightmare flicker.
Elena’s pulse pounded in her ears. “We can’t lose that file.”
“We won’t,” Adrian hissed. “But first we stay alive.”
The masked attacker advanced through the corridor with calculated ease, a silencer affixed to the weapon. The shots made soft coughs of death as they punched holes into the control station Julia had just abandoned.
Then the figure stopped.
“Elena Cruz,” the voice echoed again. “You weren’t supposed to remember. You weren’t supposed to awaken.”
Elena stepped from cover.
Adrian hissed, “What the hell are you doing?”
“Buying us ten seconds,” she replied, then raised her hands.
“I remember everything,” she said aloud. “Including you.”
The figure froze.
“You were my father’s contingency,” Elena continued. “His shadow protocol. You were meant to kill me if I failed to hide the key, weren’t you?”
A pause.
Then, for the first time, the masked figure spoke without distortion.
A woman’s voice. Quiet. Precise.
“I was meant to protect you, Elena. Until the day you became a threat.”
Julia, crawling behind the attacker, whispered over comms: “I have the pulse jammer. Give me a signal.”
Adrian met Elena’s eyes.
She gave a small nod—and moved.
In the blink of an eye, Adrian opened fire. The assassin deflected, staggered—but Julia surged up from behind and slammed the jammer into the figure’s back. The pulse jolted through the armor, and the masked woman fell with a muffled grunt.
Elena stood over her, heart racing.
“Who are you?”
The woman’s voice was faint. “I… was your godmother. Cruz trusted me more than anyone else. But your awakening… it’s a risk to everything. If you trigger Nightfall—”
“I’ll end the machine that turned my family into ghosts,” Elena said coldly.
Behind her, the main screen sparked back to life.
The data hadn’t been lost.
Only delayed.
UNX Facility – Final Panel – 2:03 PM
Julia reconnected the power core. Adrian stood guard near the unconscious attacker, who now breathed shallowly, sedated.
Elena returned to the screen.
The prompt glowed again:
RELEASE DATA?
YES / NO
She hovered over it.
Then turned to Adrian.
“Not yet,” she said. “Not until I know who’s still left playing god behind the curtain.”
She tapped a command to store the file. The screen responded:
DATA STORED – MANUAL RELEASE ENABLED ONLY WITH DNA TRIPLICATE AUTHORITY
CURRENT AUTHORIZED USERS: CRUZ / BLACKWOOD / UNKNOWN
Adrian blinked. “Unknown?”
Elena exhaled. “Someone else still holds part of the key.”
Julia narrowed her eyes. “Then we find them. Before they find us.”
UNX Facility – Main Floor – 2:05 PM
Elena sat against the cool wall, still reeling from the revelation. The vault hadn’t just shown her secrets—it had unlocked them. Her pulse was slower now, but her mind raced like thunder through a narrow canyon.
Adrian paced nearby, eyes scanning the unconscious woman they’d subdued. She’d called herself protector. But her actions—her hesitation before killing—hinted at more.
“She knew you,” he finally said. “More than she admitted.”
Elena nodded. “She was in my memories. Not just in the vault—before. I remember her at the embassy in Lisbon. She brought me candy shaped like stars. I called her Tía Mar.”
Julia blinked. “You just remembered that now?”
Elena nodded slowly. “The vault cracked something open.”
Julia moved to a data core, rewiring the backup feed. “Then it’s not just encrypted files your father buried. It’s your mind. He wove the truth into your neurons. That’s why Nightfall responds to you.”
Adrian spoke quietly. “And why they’ll stop at nothing to silence you.”
Elena’s gaze returned to the screen.
RELEASE DATA: YES / NO
AUTHORIZED USERS: CRUZ / BLACKWOOD / UNKNOWN
Unknown. The word itched at her thoughts.
“Elena,” Adrian said gently, “you don’t have to rush this. If we trigger the data now, we can’t contain it. Governments will collapse. People will die.”
“But if we don’t,” Elena whispered, “they win. Again.”
She stepped forward and placed her hand on the scanner.
USER 1: CRUZ – VERIFIED
USER 2: BLACKWOOD – VERIFIED
USER 3: PENDING DNA MATCH
Julia stepped in, stunned. “There’s a third keyholder? That means your father trusted one more person.”
Adrian’s voice was firm. “Then we find out who.”
But Elena was staring at something beyond the panel.
A blinking notification. One Julia hadn’t triggered.
A private audio file. Timestamped two weeks before her father’s death.
She pressed play.
“If you’re hearing this, it means the vault has been accessed. And that my daughter is ready. Elena, there’s a reason you were chosen. Not because you were born into my bloodline—but because you earned the truth.”
“There’s one more piece of this puzzle. I didn’t hide it in a file or a vault. I hid it in someone else. Someone who walked away from us. Someone who once swore to protect you. Her name is—”
The recording cut out. Deliberately corrupted.
Elena whispered the name that now echoed in her mind.
“Isobel.”
Adrian blinked. “Your aunt?”
Elena nodded. “She vanished after the explosion. Everyone assumed she died. But my father… he gave her the third key.”
Julia’s fingers flew over the console. “If we locate her DNA… we can unlock everything.”
But Adrian wasn’t convinced.
“And what if she doesn’t want to be found?”
The facility lights dimmed.
Then flickered back on.
A proximity alert lit up Julia’s tablet. She swore under her breath.
“They’re coming. Whoever’s left from Nightfall’s shadow division—they’ve tracked us.”
Adrian chambered a fresh round. “Then let’s make them regret it.”
Elena stood taller, her pulse steady now.
“Then let’s finish what my father started.”
End of Beneath the Billionaire Mask Chapter 54. Continue reading Chapter 55 or return to Beneath the Billionaire Mask book page.