Beneath the Billionaire Mask - Chapter 7: Chapter 7

Elena didn’t pack a bag.
There wasn’t time.
By the time Adrian’s encrypted system flagged two more leaks—photos of her leaving his building, manipulated headlines implying bribery, whispers of a romantic entanglement—her world was already spiraling.
And so was his.
They left through the underground parking garage, silent and swift, Adrian’s hand pressing lightly against the small of her back. Not forceful. Just grounding. Reassuring.
Still, her heart pounded like a war drum.
“Where are we going?” she asked as the black SUV pulled away from the curb.
“To a place no one can find us,” Adrian replied, eyes on the road ahead.
“And after that?”
He didn’t answer.
Because right now, there was no “after.”
There was only escape.
Upper Hudson Valley — 2 Hours Later
The cabin was nothing like she expected.
Not cold. Not sterile. Not billionaire-luxurious.
It was tucked deep in the woods, shadowed by towering pines, the kind of place that didn’t exist on digital maps. Warm light spilled through tall windows. Inside, the walls were lined with books, not surveillance monitors.
Adrian keyed in a code at the door. “This place belonged to Evelyn.”
Elena looked at him sharply.
“She came here when the city was too loud. Said the silence reminded her she was still human.”
Elena stepped inside slowly. The air smelled like cedar and old pages. Like memory.
Safe. And yet—anything but.
“Do you think Marcus knows about it?” she asked.
“No.” Adrian locked the door behind them. “She kept it off the grid. I made sure it stayed that way.”
Elena walked past a faded photo of Evelyn smiling in the sun. “This doesn’t feel like hiding.”
Adrian met her gaze. “It’s not. It’s a pause.”
Her voice dropped. “From what?”
He didn’t answer.
But in his eyes, she saw it.
From everything.
Later That Night
Sleep didn’t come.
Elena lay on the couch wrapped in an oversized blanket, laptop open, fingers scrolling through articles she didn’t remember clicking. Her name was everywhere now—“Mysterious Journalist Linked to Billionaire Blackwood”, “Hidden Affairs and Philanthropy Scandals?”, “From Watchdog to Mistress?”
Her skin crawled.
She’d spent her entire career exposing lies. And now she was the headline.
Adrian stepped into the room, silent in the dark, carrying two mugs of tea. He set one beside her.
“You should rest.”
She didn’t look at him. “This isn’t going away.”
“I know.”
“I had a plan, Adrian. I was going to tell the truth. All of it.”
“And now?” he asked quietly.
“Now I don’t know what the truth is anymore.”
He didn’t speak. Just watched her. A man forged by silence, by guilt. She could feel the weight of it in the air between them—like smoke before fire.
“Elena,” he said after a moment. “There’s something you need to see.”
He walked to a cabinet near the fireplace, unlocking a drawer. From inside, he pulled a slim black folder.
She took it carefully, opening it to reveal a series of redacted documents—letters, financial trails, names with most of the details blurred out except one:
Marcus Vale – Asset Disruption Protocol
Her eyes narrowed. “What is this?”
“Evelyn was investigating him. Quietly. She believed he was laundering vigilante funding into his own interests. Militia contracts. Underground bounties. Private enforcement teams.”
Elena looked up, heart racing. “You never told me this.”
“Because she never told me—not until it was too late. I found it after she died.”
“And you’ve been keeping it secret ever since?”
“I was trying to protect her legacy. And… trying not to believe he was capable of it.”
She shook her head, voice trembling. “And now he’s turned it all on us.”
Adrian nodded. “He wants to burn everything we built. And you…”
She looked up.
“You’re the perfect match.”
A long silence passed.
Then:
“I have to expose him,” Elena whispered. “But I can’t do it from the shadows.”
“Then don’t,” Adrian said, standing. “Let me pull him into the light.”
Downtown Manhattan — The Next Morning
Marcus watched the footage of the cabin on a private feed—faint heat signatures from a drone. No sound. Just the shape of two people—one seated, one pacing.
“You’re slipping, Blackwood,” he muttered to himself.
A tech specialist turned from the monitor. “Want us to move now?”
Marcus smiled. “No. Let them have their night.”
He poured a drink, cool and deliberate.
“Because tomorrow, the city stops whispering…”
He raised the glass.
“…and starts screaming.”
The Cabin — Just Before Sunrise
Elena woke to silence.
Not the peaceful kind. The wrong kind. Still and tense. Like the world was holding its breath.
Adrian was gone from the armchair he’d fallen asleep in. The tea mug sat cold beside him. The blanket folded, untouched.
She rose quietly, padded through the hallway toward the study. A faint light glowed from beneath the door.
She pushed it open.
Adrian stood in front of the fireplace, his shirt wrinkled, sleeves rolled, a file spread open on the desk. His back was to her, but the rigid set of his shoulders said everything.
He’d been up all night.
“Elena,” he said without turning. “I found something.”
She moved closer.
Laid across the desk were printouts from Evelyn’s archived files—handwritten notes, a photograph, a map of the Hudson rail lines marked with red ink.
And a name.
“Project Revenant.”
“What is this?” she whispered.
“A shell company Marcus used during the foundation’s early days. It was registered in an offshore trust, masked by fake donors. Evelyn flagged it because of unusual cash flow during an acquisition.”
He turned to her now, eyes storm-dark.
“She thought Marcus was funneling funds into private operations—off-the-books raids, bounty teams. But she never got proof.”
“And now?” Elena asked.
“Now he’s revived it. Revenant’s accounts have been reactivated. Quietly. But someone started moving money through them two weeks ago.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Two weeks ago was when I first contacted the foundation.”
“Exactly,” Adrian said. “You weren’t just a threat to me. You were a trigger. He waited until you got close, then started the clock.”
Elena’s chest tightened. “How much time do we have?”
He didn’t answer right away.
Then: “Not enough.”
Thirty Miles South — Marcus Vale’s Temporary Command Post
The screen lit up with Adrian’s face. Still, powerful. Calculated.
Marcus watched the live feed with a smirk, a phone pressed to his ear.
“Set the fire,” he said calmly. “Give the city something to smell. Something to fear.”
A voice crackled on the other end. “What about the journalist?”
“Collateral,” Marcus said, sipping his drink. “Her heart’s already in his hands. And by the time it breaks—”
He turned to the wall of monitors, where a video was queued for upload.
Footage. Evelyn’s last known moments.
Blurred, edited… damning.
Marcus smiled wider.
“so will the world’s.”
Back at the Cabin — Morning Light Breaking
Elena stood at the kitchen window, staring at the distant tree line. Frost clung to the glass.
Adrian entered quietly, his steps soft.
“I contacted someone I trust,” he said. “They’re ex-military. Used to help Evelyn when things got… messy.”
“What did they say?”
“They’ll help. But it comes with risk. Once we start pulling on Marcus’s thread, it won’t stop unraveling.”
Elena turned to him.
“Then we pull it.”
He met her eyes, searching them.
“Even if it exposes Evelyn?”
“Elena,” he said carefully, “there are things in those files I haven’t read yet. Decisions she made. Deals she might’ve struck. Are you sure—?”
“I don’t need perfect,” she said. “I need the truth.”
They stood in silence a beat longer. Then Adrian reached for her hand.
The contact was light, but it anchored them both.
“Let’s finish what she started,” Elena whispered.
A knock shattered the quiet.
They both froze.
Three sharp raps.
Then silence.
Elena stepped back, instinct thrumming.
Adrian moved slowly to the door, reaching for the weapon hidden in the cabinet.
He looked through the peephole.
Then opened it—
—only to find a flash drive duct-taped to the cabin porch rail.
Nothing else.
No footprints in the frost. No sound.
Just the flash drive.
Adrian pried it free.
Back inside, he plugged it into an isolated device.
Elena stood at his shoulder.
A video file loaded.
Grainy. Dated.
It was Evelyn.
Tied to a chair.
Her face bloodied, but her gaze—fierce.
She was speaking. Whispering.
But the audio had been removed.
Only a caption remained, typed into the lower corner of the screen:
“She didn’t die a hero. She died protecting a lie.”
Elena covered her mouth.
Adrian’s face went white.
Because the timestamp on the video…
…was from the night before she died.
The silence was suffocating.
Adrian stared at the screen, unmoving. The image of Evelyn—beaten, bound, her mouth moving in soundless desperation—was a dagger twisted clean through his ribs.
Elena stood beside him, hands clenched into fists, the echo of the caption burned into her memory.
“She didn’t die a hero. She died protecting a lie.”
“No…” Adrian whispered, barely audible. “This is fake. It has to be.”
But even as he said it, his hand trembled against the edge of the desk.
Elena reached for the mouse and paused the video. “The timestamp—can it be manipulated?”
He nodded slowly. “Yes. But not easily. This level of forgery takes money… and access.”
Her eyes flicked to him. “Then Marcus.”
Adrian’s jaw clenched, the bones in his face tight with fury. “He had the footage this whole time. This wasn’t leaked—it was orchestrated.”
“To break you.”
Adrian looked at her, something dark moving in his gaze. “No. To erase her.”
The fire that had smoldered all night inside him now roared.
“I let him get too close. I thought I could stay ahead of him, control the narrative—” His voice cracked. “But Marcus doesn’t want control.”
“He wants to rewrite history.”
Elena’s breath caught as the video file ended and another auto-loaded.
This one was worse.
Because it wasn’t Evelyn.
It was her.
A blurred clip of Elena leaving Blackwood Global three nights ago, stitched with audio spliced from an entirely different conversation. She was framed mid-sentence, laughing softly. And over it played a fabricated voice—hers—saying:
“If the story burns, let it. He’s worth it.”
Her blood ran cold.
“That’s not me,” she whispered.
“I know,” Adrian said, voice razor-sharp. “But the world won’t.”
The file ended. Silence returned.
But something in it had shifted.
This wasn’t just an attack.
It was a war declaration.
And they were running out of time.
Adrian stood suddenly, pulling a panel from beneath the bookshelf and revealing a secure lockbox. Inside: documents, a burner phone, and a small, pristine silver key.
Elena watched. “What is that?”
“Access to one of Evelyn’s last dead drops. She told me to only open it if I ever doubted everything.”
His voice turned hard. “I doubt everything now.”
He looked up, fire returning to his eyes.
“We’re not running anymore.”
Elena stepped closer. “Then what?”
Adrian closed the lockbox with a snap.
“We’re going to finish what Evelyn started. And this time… Marcus doesn’t get the last move.”
Elsewhere — Marcus Vale’s Surveillance Room
Marcus leaned back in his chair, watching the security feed go black.
“They saw the video,” his technician said.
He smirked. “Good. Let it fester.”
“What if they trace it?”
“They will,” Marcus said, swirling his drink. “I’m counting on it.”
He stood slowly, walked to the window.
“I gave them the match,” he said. “Let’s see if they burn their own house down.”
Outside, the storm was coming.
And inside it, the game was about to turn violent.