Beneath the Billionaire Mask - Chapter 9: Chapter 9
You are reading Beneath the Billionaire Mask, Chapter 9: Chapter 9. Read more chapters of Beneath the Billionaire Mask.
Brooklyn – 3:07 PM
The address from Evelyn’s audio file wasn’t listed anywhere. No corporate registry, no visible signage. Just a half-abandoned warehouse tucked behind a string of mechanic shops, quiet enough to be forgotten—perfect enough to hide the worst kind of secrets.
Adrian parked three blocks away.
“Marcus has used this building before,” he said. “Years ago. I thought it was shut down after the raids.”
Elena double-checked the strap of her shoulder bag—her recorder hidden inside. “If Evelyn’s trail led her here, there’s a reason it survived.”
They moved fast and silent, ducking through a rusted side gate and slipping inside through a service door that had been crudely re-welded and broken again.
The air inside was thick—damp, metallic, and faintly buzzing with the hum of electricity.
And security cameras.
Adrian spotted them first. “We’re not alone.”
Elena reached into her jacket and clicked the hidden transmitter Julia had once given her—looping the cameras for ten-minute intervals.
Adrian raised an eyebrow. “Remind me to ask how you learned to do that.”
She smirked faintly. “You’re not the only one with secrets.”
Back Room – 3:21 PM
What they found wasn’t just storage.
It was data.
Rows of servers. Paper files stacked in fireproof drawers. A digital archive of surveillance footage, financial transfers… and profiles.
Names. Faces. Targets.
Elena’s eyes scanned the labels on the shelves:
Blackwood.
Cruz.
Evelyn Blackwood.
Foundation Board Members.
Senator Lorring.
J. King.
She pulled one drawer open. Inside were copies of emails, call logs, photos taken from private moments—like a dossier meant to discredit or destroy.
Adrian opened another drawer. Inside: a glossy red folder stamped with a black insignia—two interlocking snakes devouring each other.
He opened it.
His hands froze.
Inside: a signed agreement with his name and Marcus’s, dated seven years ago. The project title at the top?
“Operation Masquerade: Legacy Redirect.”
“What the hell…” he whispered.
Elena stepped beside him, reading. “What is this?”
“It was meant to be a shell initiative,” he said, scanning the lines. “A cleanup project after the riots… but Marcus turned it into something else. This… this makes it look like I funded the takedowns. The erasures.”
Elena’s breath caught. “So if he releases this with the video, it won’t just be your reputation—”
“It’ll be criminal. He’ll frame me as the architect.”
Footsteps echoed from the far side of the warehouse.
Both froze.
Then the lights snapped off.
Security Hall – 3:26 PM
A beam of a flashlight cut across the corridor.
Voices murmured—two men, possibly three. Not guards. Hired watchers.
Adrian motioned to Elena. They ducked into a dark server alcove.
Adrian whispered, “Take what you can. If we’re caught, you run. I’ll stall them.”
“Don’t be noble now,” she hissed. “You’re not dying on me.”
The server lights flickered. The drive was still downloading.
The voices grew closer.
Then—
A phone rang.
Not theirs.
Not the men’s.
From inside a file drawer across the room.
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
The flashlight turned.
Someone had heard it.
Adrian shoved the flash drive into his coat.
“Now,” he mouthed.
They bolted—through the side door, down the hall, across a narrow catwalk and out a broken window just as a shout erupted behind them.
Elena landed hard on the alley pavement, Adrian close behind.
Sirens wailed in the distance—Marcus hadn’t just set a trap.
He’d triggered an alert.
Safehouse – 5:45 PM
The flash drive was intact.
Adrian inserted it into a backup rig. Elena watched the screen flicker as folders loaded—hundreds of files, all marked with a familiar symbol:
Ouroboros.
But one folder was locked.
“Encrypted,” he said. “Two-factor. Voice ID and passcode.”
Elena leaned closer. “Do you recognize the voice?”
He nodded slowly. “Marcus.”
“I thought you’d say Evelyn.”
“I did, too. But he changed it. It’s his voice now. And his terms.”
A small red light flashed in the upper corner of the screen.
A remote trigger.
The files were on a timer.
Adrian’s heart slammed into his ribs.
“It’s set to self-delete.”
Elena’s voice was steel. “Then we unlock it now.”
Safehouse – 5:45 PM | Countdown: 4:58
Adrian stared at the screen as the digital timer bled red across the files.
“Four minutes and fifty seconds,” Elena said. “How do we bypass Marcus’s voiceprint?”
Adrian exhaled slowly. “We don’t. We replicate it.”
He pulled out a second burner phone from his desk drawer, connected it to the laptop, and opened a waveform editing program. Elena watched as he scrubbed through audio files from earlier surveillance—Marcus’s call from the Beacon Falls burner.
“You kept his voice?” she asked.
“I don’t erase anything,” Adrian muttered. “I just bury it deeper.”
He isolated a phrase.
“You never did learn…”
Another.
“…follow. Right to the end.”
He cut and stitched syllables together, reshaping the waveform until it mimicked Marcus’s cadence.
“Open. Folder. Now.”
The audio was rough—but passable.
Elena bit her lip. “You sure this will fool a biometric gate?”
“It doesn’t need to fool it forever. Just for one heartbeat.”
He hit play.
The waveform echoed through the room.
The drive paused… beeped… then flashed green.
ACCESS GRANTED.
A single file blinked open.
Adrian clicked it.
Operation Masquerade – Full Briefing (Video File)
Marcus’s face filled the screen—recorded in a private conference room, timestamped four years ago.
He was younger. Slicker. And smug.
“Phase three will begin with the Blackwood pivot. We’ll leak a portion of the Foundation’s shell accounts to suggest Blackwood orchestrated the payouts. Then we launch the media event. Evelyn’s footage goes viral. And Adrian…”
He smiled coldly.
“He’s too proud to deny the truth, even when it’s twisted. He’ll disappear on his own.”
Elena’s stomach turned.
Adrian leaned forward, jaw clenched so tightly she thought it might crack.
“And if he doesn’t?” someone asked offscreen.
“Then we push Cruz into the story. Make her the linchpin. The leak, the betrayal, the downfall. She’ll be the nail in his coffin. He won’t see it coming.”
Elena froze.
Adrian turned to her slowly.
“Marcus planned to use you. From the beginning.”
She nodded, voice quiet. “But it didn’t work.”
“Because you didn’t betray me.”
“No,” she said, rising to her feet. “But now we use it to destroy him.”
Brooklyn – 6:12 PM
Marcus Vale sat in a high-rise conference room, watching the numbers climb.
Millions of views.
Hundreds of reposts.
Evelyn’s edited footage—doctored, damning—was burning through social media like gasoline on silk.
The headline screamed across every screen:
“Blackwood Foundation Exposed: The Secret Beneath the Mask”
He sipped his drink.
Then froze.
Because something had changed.
The video feed he’d seeded had been hijacked. Midway through the stream, another clip began to play:
“He’ll disappear on his own…”
His own face.
His own voice.
The full unedited video Adrian had just unlocked.
“Make Cruz the leak. Make her the betrayal. She’ll be the nail in his coffin.”
Marcus’s glass shattered against the wall.
Downtown – 6:18 PM
Elena watched from a side office at one of Adrian’s secured buildings as her inbox exploded.
Tips. Whistleblowers. Journalists demanding the source.
Julia called twice. Elena let it ring.
Adrian stood beside her, silent. For once, not calculating—just there.
“You just detonated the truth,” she whispered.
He looked at her.
“No,” he said. “We did.”
Then the screen blinked.
A single new message came through.
No name.
Just a subject line:
You exposed him. Now I’ll expose you.
Elena’s hands froze on the keyboard.
The message opened automatically.
Inside:
A photo.
Her. Adrian. In the alley outside the warehouse. His arm around her. Her eyes locked on his.
Taken from above.
Timestamped fifteen minutes ago.
Elena stared.
“We’ve been followed.”
Downtown – 6:19 PM
Elena’s breath hitched as she stared at the grainy surveillance photo.
Her. Adrian. Framed like lovers caught in a stolen moment—intimate, dangerous, damning.
She zoomed in.
Upper right corner—barely visible—a faint watermark.
Veritas01
Adrian’s brow furrowed. “That’s not one of Marcus’s tags.”
“No,” Elena murmured. “It’s worse.”
He turned to her, sharp. “Who?”
“I don’t know for sure,” she said. “But during my final months at the station, there were rumors of a ghost network—independent exposé agents who worked off-grid. They’d trade in dirt on powerful people, not for money… but to level the playing field. I thought it was urban legend. Code name was ‘Veritas.’ Latin for truth.”
Adrian’s jaw locked. “And now they’re watching us.”
Elena nodded slowly. “Someone else wants this story. And they just let us know they’re not done.”
The message blinked again.
Another file attached.
Elena hovered over it, then double-clicked.
A video.
It opened to security cam footage from six months ago—a parking garage.
A man steps into view. Adrian.
Then another man joins him.
Marcus.
Their body language is tense, volatile.
Marcus grabs Adrian’s shoulder—says something inaudible. Adrian shoves him back.
Then the footage cuts.
Another clip starts.
A woman. Elena. Entering the foundation for the first time under her cover.
Voiceover filters in. A distorted voice, genderless.
“Truth is not a weapon. It’s a mirror. And both of you have been using it as a blade.”
Another image flickers onscreen—Evelyn. Walking into what looks like a private meeting room. Alone.
“You want the full picture? You’ve only just found the edge.”
Then the screen goes black.
Silence.
Adrian stepped back.
Elena’s heart was hammering. “What the hell is this?”
Adrian’s voice was razor-thin. “It’s a warning.”
“No—it’s a challenge,” she snapped. “They’re saying we’ve only peeled back the first layer.”
He turned toward her, something cold and final settling into his expression.
“We don’t just have one enemy anymore.”
Elena looked at the screen, the image of herself in that alley still burned into her mind.
“No,” she whispered. “We have an audience.”
The address from Evelyn’s audio file wasn’t listed anywhere. No corporate registry, no visible signage. Just a half-abandoned warehouse tucked behind a string of mechanic shops, quiet enough to be forgotten—perfect enough to hide the worst kind of secrets.
Adrian parked three blocks away.
“Marcus has used this building before,” he said. “Years ago. I thought it was shut down after the raids.”
Elena double-checked the strap of her shoulder bag—her recorder hidden inside. “If Evelyn’s trail led her here, there’s a reason it survived.”
They moved fast and silent, ducking through a rusted side gate and slipping inside through a service door that had been crudely re-welded and broken again.
The air inside was thick—damp, metallic, and faintly buzzing with the hum of electricity.
And security cameras.
Adrian spotted them first. “We’re not alone.”
Elena reached into her jacket and clicked the hidden transmitter Julia had once given her—looping the cameras for ten-minute intervals.
Adrian raised an eyebrow. “Remind me to ask how you learned to do that.”
She smirked faintly. “You’re not the only one with secrets.”
Back Room – 3:21 PM
What they found wasn’t just storage.
It was data.
Rows of servers. Paper files stacked in fireproof drawers. A digital archive of surveillance footage, financial transfers… and profiles.
Names. Faces. Targets.
Elena’s eyes scanned the labels on the shelves:
Blackwood.
Cruz.
Evelyn Blackwood.
Foundation Board Members.
Senator Lorring.
J. King.
She pulled one drawer open. Inside were copies of emails, call logs, photos taken from private moments—like a dossier meant to discredit or destroy.
Adrian opened another drawer. Inside: a glossy red folder stamped with a black insignia—two interlocking snakes devouring each other.
He opened it.
His hands froze.
Inside: a signed agreement with his name and Marcus’s, dated seven years ago. The project title at the top?
“Operation Masquerade: Legacy Redirect.”
“What the hell…” he whispered.
Elena stepped beside him, reading. “What is this?”
“It was meant to be a shell initiative,” he said, scanning the lines. “A cleanup project after the riots… but Marcus turned it into something else. This… this makes it look like I funded the takedowns. The erasures.”
Elena’s breath caught. “So if he releases this with the video, it won’t just be your reputation—”
“It’ll be criminal. He’ll frame me as the architect.”
Footsteps echoed from the far side of the warehouse.
Both froze.
Then the lights snapped off.
Security Hall – 3:26 PM
A beam of a flashlight cut across the corridor.
Voices murmured—two men, possibly three. Not guards. Hired watchers.
Adrian motioned to Elena. They ducked into a dark server alcove.
Adrian whispered, “Take what you can. If we’re caught, you run. I’ll stall them.”
“Don’t be noble now,” she hissed. “You’re not dying on me.”
The server lights flickered. The drive was still downloading.
The voices grew closer.
Then—
A phone rang.
Not theirs.
Not the men’s.
From inside a file drawer across the room.
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
The flashlight turned.
Someone had heard it.
Adrian shoved the flash drive into his coat.
“Now,” he mouthed.
They bolted—through the side door, down the hall, across a narrow catwalk and out a broken window just as a shout erupted behind them.
Elena landed hard on the alley pavement, Adrian close behind.
Sirens wailed in the distance—Marcus hadn’t just set a trap.
He’d triggered an alert.
Safehouse – 5:45 PM
The flash drive was intact.
Adrian inserted it into a backup rig. Elena watched the screen flicker as folders loaded—hundreds of files, all marked with a familiar symbol:
Ouroboros.
But one folder was locked.
“Encrypted,” he said. “Two-factor. Voice ID and passcode.”
Elena leaned closer. “Do you recognize the voice?”
He nodded slowly. “Marcus.”
“I thought you’d say Evelyn.”
“I did, too. But he changed it. It’s his voice now. And his terms.”
A small red light flashed in the upper corner of the screen.
A remote trigger.
The files were on a timer.
Adrian’s heart slammed into his ribs.
“It’s set to self-delete.”
Elena’s voice was steel. “Then we unlock it now.”
Safehouse – 5:45 PM | Countdown: 4:58
Adrian stared at the screen as the digital timer bled red across the files.
“Four minutes and fifty seconds,” Elena said. “How do we bypass Marcus’s voiceprint?”
Adrian exhaled slowly. “We don’t. We replicate it.”
He pulled out a second burner phone from his desk drawer, connected it to the laptop, and opened a waveform editing program. Elena watched as he scrubbed through audio files from earlier surveillance—Marcus’s call from the Beacon Falls burner.
“You kept his voice?” she asked.
“I don’t erase anything,” Adrian muttered. “I just bury it deeper.”
He isolated a phrase.
“You never did learn…”
Another.
“…follow. Right to the end.”
He cut and stitched syllables together, reshaping the waveform until it mimicked Marcus’s cadence.
“Open. Folder. Now.”
The audio was rough—but passable.
Elena bit her lip. “You sure this will fool a biometric gate?”
“It doesn’t need to fool it forever. Just for one heartbeat.”
He hit play.
The waveform echoed through the room.
The drive paused… beeped… then flashed green.
ACCESS GRANTED.
A single file blinked open.
Adrian clicked it.
Operation Masquerade – Full Briefing (Video File)
Marcus’s face filled the screen—recorded in a private conference room, timestamped four years ago.
He was younger. Slicker. And smug.
“Phase three will begin with the Blackwood pivot. We’ll leak a portion of the Foundation’s shell accounts to suggest Blackwood orchestrated the payouts. Then we launch the media event. Evelyn’s footage goes viral. And Adrian…”
He smiled coldly.
“He’s too proud to deny the truth, even when it’s twisted. He’ll disappear on his own.”
Elena’s stomach turned.
Adrian leaned forward, jaw clenched so tightly she thought it might crack.
“And if he doesn’t?” someone asked offscreen.
“Then we push Cruz into the story. Make her the linchpin. The leak, the betrayal, the downfall. She’ll be the nail in his coffin. He won’t see it coming.”
Elena froze.
Adrian turned to her slowly.
“Marcus planned to use you. From the beginning.”
She nodded, voice quiet. “But it didn’t work.”
“Because you didn’t betray me.”
“No,” she said, rising to her feet. “But now we use it to destroy him.”
Brooklyn – 6:12 PM
Marcus Vale sat in a high-rise conference room, watching the numbers climb.
Millions of views.
Hundreds of reposts.
Evelyn’s edited footage—doctored, damning—was burning through social media like gasoline on silk.
The headline screamed across every screen:
“Blackwood Foundation Exposed: The Secret Beneath the Mask”
He sipped his drink.
Then froze.
Because something had changed.
The video feed he’d seeded had been hijacked. Midway through the stream, another clip began to play:
“He’ll disappear on his own…”
His own face.
His own voice.
The full unedited video Adrian had just unlocked.
“Make Cruz the leak. Make her the betrayal. She’ll be the nail in his coffin.”
Marcus’s glass shattered against the wall.
Downtown – 6:18 PM
Elena watched from a side office at one of Adrian’s secured buildings as her inbox exploded.
Tips. Whistleblowers. Journalists demanding the source.
Julia called twice. Elena let it ring.
Adrian stood beside her, silent. For once, not calculating—just there.
“You just detonated the truth,” she whispered.
He looked at her.
“No,” he said. “We did.”
Then the screen blinked.
A single new message came through.
No name.
Just a subject line:
You exposed him. Now I’ll expose you.
Elena’s hands froze on the keyboard.
The message opened automatically.
Inside:
A photo.
Her. Adrian. In the alley outside the warehouse. His arm around her. Her eyes locked on his.
Taken from above.
Timestamped fifteen minutes ago.
Elena stared.
“We’ve been followed.”
Downtown – 6:19 PM
Elena’s breath hitched as she stared at the grainy surveillance photo.
Her. Adrian. Framed like lovers caught in a stolen moment—intimate, dangerous, damning.
She zoomed in.
Upper right corner—barely visible—a faint watermark.
Veritas01
Adrian’s brow furrowed. “That’s not one of Marcus’s tags.”
“No,” Elena murmured. “It’s worse.”
He turned to her, sharp. “Who?”
“I don’t know for sure,” she said. “But during my final months at the station, there were rumors of a ghost network—independent exposé agents who worked off-grid. They’d trade in dirt on powerful people, not for money… but to level the playing field. I thought it was urban legend. Code name was ‘Veritas.’ Latin for truth.”
Adrian’s jaw locked. “And now they’re watching us.”
Elena nodded slowly. “Someone else wants this story. And they just let us know they’re not done.”
The message blinked again.
Another file attached.
Elena hovered over it, then double-clicked.
A video.
It opened to security cam footage from six months ago—a parking garage.
A man steps into view. Adrian.
Then another man joins him.
Marcus.
Their body language is tense, volatile.
Marcus grabs Adrian’s shoulder—says something inaudible. Adrian shoves him back.
Then the footage cuts.
Another clip starts.
A woman. Elena. Entering the foundation for the first time under her cover.
Voiceover filters in. A distorted voice, genderless.
“Truth is not a weapon. It’s a mirror. And both of you have been using it as a blade.”
Another image flickers onscreen—Evelyn. Walking into what looks like a private meeting room. Alone.
“You want the full picture? You’ve only just found the edge.”
Then the screen goes black.
Silence.
Adrian stepped back.
Elena’s heart was hammering. “What the hell is this?”
Adrian’s voice was razor-thin. “It’s a warning.”
“No—it’s a challenge,” she snapped. “They’re saying we’ve only peeled back the first layer.”
He turned toward her, something cold and final settling into his expression.
“We don’t just have one enemy anymore.”
Elena looked at the screen, the image of herself in that alley still burned into her mind.
“No,” she whispered. “We have an audience.”
End of Beneath the Billionaire Mask Chapter 9. Continue reading Chapter 10 or return to Beneath the Billionaire Mask book page.