PART 4 — THE SECRET BURIED IN PRAGUE
Gabriel pulled the trigger.
The gunshot exploded through the sealed chamber.
“David!”
His body jerked backward.
He crashed against me, knocking us both onto the stone floor.
A sharp pain tore through my ribs, but I barely noticed it.
All I could see was David lying across my legs, completely motionless.
“You killed him!” I screamed.
Gabriel lowered the gun.
“No.”
David suddenly coughed.
His hand moved toward his chest.
When he pulled open his jacket, a small black device fell from the torn fabric and bounced across the floor.
A bullet had passed through it.
David stared at the shattered object.
“What is that?”
“A tracking transmitter,” Gabriel answered.
He crushed it beneath his shoe.
“Maya must have slipped it into your jacket when you carried Victoria from the basement.”
David’s face hardened.
“She knew we would find the second entrance.”
“She wanted Adrian to know exactly where we were.”
Gas continued pouring from the vents.
My lungs were already burning.
I looked down at my father’s letter.
Gabriel had said my father never intended me to survive long enough to read it.
“Then why did you say that?”
He looked directly at me.
“Because Adrian was listening.”
Gabriel pointed toward a tiny red light hidden above the monitor.
A camera.
“If Adrian believed I had turned against you, he would keep watching instead of triggering the emergency ignition system.”
My blood ran cold.
“Ignition?”
“The gas is flammable.”
David looked at the vents.
“So one spark could destroy the entire underground level.”
Gabriel holstered his gun and pressed the device in his hand against the vault’s control panel.
“You have perhaps two minutes before the concentration becomes lethal.”
I held the letter tightly.
“Is this real?”
Gabriel did not look at it.
“No.”
“You recognized the handwriting.”
“Because Adrian’s people have been forging your father’s signature for years.”
“The letter was inside my suitcase.”
“Who had access to your bedroom?”
The answer came immediately.
Maya.
She had wandered through every room in the mansion for three years.
She had borrowed clothes without permission.
She had entered my bedroom while I was sleeping.
And she had once insisted on helping the maids reorganize my closets.
“She planted it,” I whispered.
“Most likely after Thomas entered the estate,” Gabriel said. “Adrian wanted you to distrust the one person capable of opening the archive.”
“You?”
His expression changed.
“Not exactly.”
A loud metallic click came from the control panel.
Gabriel pulled the device free.
The vault door remained closed.
“Manual lock,” he said.
David forced himself upright.
“Can we break through the wall?”
“This chamber was built beneath forty feet of reinforced concrete.”
The gas crept higher.
My vision began to blur.
I pressed part of David’s jacket over my mouth.
“Then how do we get out?”
Gabriel looked at the monitor.
“There should be an emergency release inside the chamber.”
David began searching the walls.
Gabriel checked beneath the steel table.
I tried to stand, but my body refused.
The stone floor seemed to sway beneath me.
Then I remembered something from the security video.
Thomas had been chained to a chair in the center of the room.
But when we entered, the chair was several feet away from where it had appeared on camera.
“Move the chair,” I said.
Neither man heard me.
“Move the chair!”
David dragged it aside.
Beneath one leg was a circular metal plate.
Gabriel dropped to his knees and brushed blood and dust from its surface.
Four symbols had been carved around the edge.
They matched the symbols on the back of the jade pendant.
Gabriel stared at them.
“Thomas found the release.”
“Then why didn’t he use it?”
“Because he didn’t have the green key.”
The jade pendant was already with Old Sal.
Gabriel pressed each symbol in a different order.
Nothing happened.
David tried lifting the metal plate.
It did not move.
My lungs tightened.
Breathing became almost impossible.
“There must be another way.”
Gabriel looked at me.
“Your father designed this vault.”
“How would I know the combination?”
“He trained you to read financial reports when you were a child.”
“That has nothing to do with this.”
“Your father never taught without a reason.”
Memories rushed through my mind.
My father sitting across from me inside his library.
Balance sheets spread across the table.
His finger tapping four numbers repeatedly.
Assets.
Liabilities.
Equity.
Cash.
“He always made me read the statements in the same order,” I whispered.
Gabriel crouched beside the plate.
“Which order?”
I looked at the four symbols.
A tower.
A broken chain.
A crown.
A river.
Assets.
Liabilities.
Equity.
Cash flow.
“Tower. Chain. Crown. River.”
Gabriel pressed them.
The plate clicked.
A handle rose from its center.
David grabbed it and pulled.
A narrow section of the floor lifted, revealing a ladder descending into darkness.
Fresh air rushed upward.
“Go!” Gabriel ordered.
David climbed down first.
Gabriel lifted me into his arms.
As he carried me toward the opening, the hidden camera above the monitor rotated toward us.
Adrian was still watching.
The speaker crackled.
“You always were clever, Victoria.”
Gabriel stopped.
Adrian’s voice filled the chamber.
“But cleverness will not save Thomas.”
I raised my head.
“Where are you taking him?”
“To the place where this began.”
“Pier Seventeen?”
Adrian laughed.
“That was only for Gabriel.”
The timer appeared on the monitor again.
This time, it showed forty-seven minutes.
“You have until sunrise to discover where we are.”
The screen changed.
For less than two seconds, I saw Thomas inside the moving vehicle.
Behind him, through the rear window, stood a tall clock tower illuminated against the night sky.
Then the image vanished.
“I’ll kill you,” I whispered.
“No, Victoria. You still believe I am the monster in your story.”
“You nearly beat me to death.”
“My men were instructed to frighten you, not kill you.”
“Seventeen bones were fractured!”
Silence.
That was the first time Adrian sounded surprised.
“What did you say?”
“Your security men beat me for three hours while you watched.”
“I was not inside the estate.”
I stared at the speaker.
“You stood in the hallway.”
“No.”
His answer came immediately.
“Someone wanted you to believe I was there.”
Gabriel tightened his grip around me.
“Don’t listen to him.”
But Adrian continued.
“I returned to Greenwich less than twenty minutes ago. By then, Gabriel’s men had already breached the property.”
“You ordered the beating.”
“I ordered you confined after Maya claimed you pushed her down the stairs.”
“You said, ‘Keep hitting her.’”
“That was not me.”
I remembered the hallway.
My vision had been blurred by blood.
A man had stood in the shadows wearing Julian’s dark suit.
I had heard Julian’s voice.
But had I clearly seen his face?
No.
The speaker crackled again.
“Ask Gabriel who owns the technology capable of copying a man’s voice.”
Gabriel carried me toward the opening.
“We’re leaving.”
“Ask him!” Adrian shouted.
Gabriel began descending the ladder.
The speaker’s final words followed us into the darkness.
“Your uncle ordered the men to beat you, Victoria!”
Then the vault door exploded.
Fire roared across the chamber above us.
Gabriel shoved me downward.
David caught my body as the blast struck.
The floor shook violently.
Flames poured through the opening.
Gabriel jumped onto the ladder and pulled the hatch closed above him.
For several seconds, we hung in total darkness.
Only our breathing could be heard.
Then David switched on a small flashlight.
The ladder descended into a narrow brick tunnel.
Water reached our ankles.
Gabriel’s coat had caught fire along one sleeve.
David tore it away and stamped it out.
I stared at Gabriel.
“Did you order the beating?”
“No.”
“Do not lie to me.”
“I didn’t.”
“Then why did Adrian know about it?”
“Because he is manipulating you.”
“You manipulated him inside the vault.”
“To keep you alive.”
“And what happened in Prague?”
Gabriel said nothing.
The tunnel stretched ahead of us.
I reached toward David.
“Put me down.”
“Ma’am—”
“Put me down.”
He carefully lowered me until my feet touched the wet ground.
Pain surged through me so intensely that black dots filled my vision.
I leaned against the brick wall.
Gabriel stepped closer.
“You cannot walk.”
“I can stand long enough to hear the truth.”
“We do not have time.”
“I have spent six years married to a man who doesn’t exist. My family is dead. My brother has been kidnapped. A woman inside my home helped destroy everything I loved.”
My voice broke.
“And every person around me keeps telling me there is no time for the truth.”
The tunnel fell silent.
“I am not taking another step until you tell me what happened in Prague.”
Gabriel stared at me for a long moment.
Then he removed the wet black coat from his shoulders.
“Thirty years ago, your father, Elias Vale, and I created a private intelligence network.”
“Vance Enterprises?”
“That company was only the public face.”
David glanced toward him.
Gabriel continued.
“Construction projects gave us access to ports, government facilities, financial institutions, and private estates. Elias used those connections to collect information.”
“For blackmail?”
“At first, we told ourselves it was protection.”
“And later?”
Gabriel’s face darkened.
“Later, Elias began selling information to whoever paid the most.”
“Did my father know?”
“Not at first.”
The three of us began moving through the tunnel.
David supported most of my weight.
“When your father discovered what Elias had done, he wanted to shut down the network,” Gabriel said. “Elias refused.”
“So you went to Prague.”
“A government minister had agreed to purchase a list containing the identities of hundreds of undercover agents. We followed Elias to stop the sale.”
“And the dead man in the photograph?”
“The minister.”
“Who killed him?”
Gabriel looked straight ahead.
“I did.”
The tunnel seemed colder.
“My father’s letter was telling the truth.”
“Only part of it.”
“What part was missing?”
“Elias killed your mother.”
I stopped.
David nearly lost his grip on me.
“My mother died in the plane crash.”
“No.”
Gabriel’s voice became quieter.
“The woman who raised you as Evelyn Vance was not your biological mother.”
For a moment, I could not understand the words.
They entered my ears but refused to form meaning.
“That’s impossible.”
“Your biological mother’s name was Elena Markovic.”
“No.”
“She was an intelligence officer stationed in Prague.”
“No.”
“Your father met her while establishing the European branch of the network.”
I pushed away from David.
“You’re lying.”
“I wish I were.”
“My mother gave birth to me in New York.”
“Evelyn raised you from the time you were six months old.”
“She had photographs.”
“Arranged photographs.”
“Hospital records.”
“Forged.”
I struck Gabriel across the face.
The movement sent agony through my shoulder, but I did not care.
He accepted the blow without defending himself.
“My mother loved me.”
“Yes.”
“Then don’t stand there and tell me she wasn’t my mother!”
“She was your mother in every way that mattered.”
Tears burned in my eyes.
“But Elena gave birth to you.”
“Why would my father hide that?”
“Because Elias discovered Elena was investigating our network.”
I stared at him.
“He killed her?”
Gabriel nodded.
“He lured her to an apartment in Prague. Your father and I arrived too late.”
“The body in the photograph…”
“Elena.”
My knees gave way.
David caught me.
I remembered the grainy image.
The body lying behind the three men.
The face hidden from view.
My biological mother had been lying on that floor.
“Why were you all standing there?” I whispered.
“Elias forced your father to choose. Hand over the archive, or he would expose your existence to the same people Elena had been investigating.”
“What did my father do?”
“He surrendered the black pendant.”
“The second half of the cipher.”
Gabriel nodded.
“But Elias still tried to kill us. During the struggle, I shot him.”
“You said he died in prison.”
“The man sent to prison was not Elias.”
I stared at him.
“Then who was he?”
“One of Elias’s employees. He was paid to accept the charges.”
“So Elias survived Prague.”
“Yes.”
“Where is he now?”
Gabriel stopped walking.
“That is the question your father spent thirty years trying to answer.”
The tunnel ended at a rusted steel door.
David pushed it open.
We emerged inside a small abandoned utility building beyond the estate grounds.
Gabriel’s men were waiting with vehicles and medical equipment.
A doctor rushed toward me.
I stepped backward.
“No hospital.”
“You are bleeding internally,” she said. “You may have less than an hour.”
“Then give me an hour.”
“Victoria,” Gabriel warned.
“Thomas has forty minutes.”
The doctor exchanged a look with him.
“I can stabilize her temporarily,” she said, “but she needs surgery immediately afterward.”
They placed me on a stretcher inside an armored vehicle.
The doctor inserted an intravenous line and pressed bandages against my wounds.
Gabriel sat across from me while David contacted the men searching for Adrian’s vehicle.
“No matches at the southern gate,” David reported. “The license plates were stolen.”
“What about the clock tower?” I asked.
Gabriel opened a tablet.
“There are dozens around New York and Connecticut.”
I closed my eyes.
The image from the video replayed in my mind.
Thomas in the back seat.
Maya beside him.
The glowing clock face behind them.
There had been something else.
A red reflection in the rear window.
Not a traffic light.
Letters.
Three reversed letters.
“Stop.”
Gabriel looked at me.
“What?”
“The video.”
He replayed the two-second clip.
The clock tower appeared behind Thomas.
Gabriel froze the image.
In the corner of the rear window was a reflected neon sign.
The letters were reversed.
R-E-I.
David leaned closer.
“Could be part of a longer word.”
I studied the shape of the clock tower.
My father had once taken Thomas and me to an abandoned waterfront building when we were children.
He said it had once been the largest refrigeration warehouse on the East Coast.
A red neon sign had stood above its loading entrance.
EMPIRE ICE.
“The Empire Cold Storage building,” I said.
Gabriel stared at me.
“It was demolished fifteen years ago.”
“No. Only the front warehouses were demolished. The underground storage tunnels still exist.”
“How do you know?”
“My father owned them.”
David checked the location.
“It is eight miles from Pier Seventeen.”
Gabriel ordered the driver to move.
The armored vehicle accelerated through the night.
The doctor injected something into my IV.
Warmth spread through my body.
“You will remain conscious,” she said. “But the effect will not last.”
Gabriel loaded a fresh magazine into his gun.
I looked at him.
“Why does Adrian want the archive?”
“To find Elias.”
“You believe Elias is alive?”
“I know he is.”
“How?”
Gabriel’s face became unreadable.
“Because he contacted me three months ago.”
Everyone inside the vehicle fell silent.
“What did he say?”
“He said your father had finally paid for Prague.”
The plane crash.
The collapse of Vance Enterprises.
My family’s destruction had not been Adrian’s revenge alone.
His father had returned.
“Did Adrian know?”
“I don’t think so.”
“So Julian—Adrian—may not be controlling Maya.”
“No.”
Gabriel looked out the window.
“I believe Maya is working for Elias.”
My heart pounded.
The car turned toward the abandoned industrial district.
In the distance, the clock tower rose above the dark warehouses.
The time was 4:12 in the morning.
Thomas had less than twenty minutes.
Gabriel’s team surrounded the building.
No lights shone inside.
No vehicles were visible.
The armored car stopped beside a rusted loading entrance.
David helped me out.
The doctor protested, but I grabbed the side of the vehicle and forced myself upright.
“Stay behind us,” Gabriel ordered.
We entered through a broken steel door.
The old warehouse smelled of rust, oil, and stagnant water.
Gabriel’s men spread through the darkness.
A trail of fresh blood led toward a freight elevator.
“Thomas,” I whispered.
The elevator had no power.
David and two men forced the doors apart.
A ladder descended into the underground level.
This time, Gabriel did not try to stop me.
We climbed down.
At the bottom was a corridor lined with thick insulated doors.
The blood trail continued.
One door stood open.
Inside, Thomas was tied to a chair.
His head hung forward.
“Thomas!”
I stumbled toward him.
Gabriel caught my arm.
“Wait.”
A thin wire stretched across the doorway.
One of his men cut it carefully.
We entered.
I touched my brother’s face.
His skin was warm.
“Thomas, wake up.”
His eyelids fluttered.
“Victoria?”
A sob escaped me.
I wrapped my arms around him.
Pain tore through my body, but I held him anyway.
“You’re alive.”
“So are you.”
“I thought you were dead.”
“I’m sorry.”
David cut the ropes.
Gabriel searched the room.
“Where are Adrian and Maya?”
Thomas’s expression changed.
“They knew you were coming.”
“Where did they go?”
“They didn’t bring me here to escape.”
A low humming began beneath the floor.
Red lights switched on across the ceiling.
Gabriel looked toward the far wall.
A row of refrigeration compressors had started operating.
“What is that?” David asked.
Thomas tried to stand.
“This building is a trap.”
Steel doors slammed shut throughout the underground corridor.
Cold air blasted from the vents.
Frost began forming on the walls.
A monitor switched on.
Maya appeared on the screen.
She was sitting inside a private aircraft.
Adrian was beside her, unconscious, with blood running from his temple.
“Hello, Victoria,” Maya said.
My hands clenched.
“What did you do to him?”
“To Adrian?”
She smiled.
“He finally discovered who I truly work for.”
“Elias Vale.”
Her smile faded slightly.
“So Gabriel told you.”
“Where is Elias?”
“Closer than you think.”
The temperature dropped rapidly.
My breath became visible.
Maya leaned toward the camera.
“You spent six years believing Adrian was your enemy. Adrian spent thirty years believing your father was his.”
She laughed softly.
“But both of you were wrong.”
The camera moved.
A man sat across from Maya inside the aircraft.
At first, only his polished shoes were visible.
Then the camera slowly rose.
Gray trousers.
A dark overcoat.
A pair of familiar hands.
My heart stopped before I saw his face.
“No,” I whispered.
The man looked directly into the camera.
He had aged.
His hair was silver.
A scar ran across his forehead.
But I knew those eyes.
I had seen them every morning of my childhood.
I had watched them fill with pride at my graduation.
I had seen them shine with tears on my wedding day.
My father smiled at me from the screen.
“Hello, Victoria.”
I could not breathe.
Gabriel stepped backward as though he had seen a ghost.
“That’s impossible.”
My father’s smile grew colder.
“Your uncle has lied to you about many things.”
“Dad?”
The word came out like the voice of a frightened child.
My father leaned closer.
“You were never supposed to activate the jade pendant.”
Tears streamed down my face.
“You’re alive.”
“Yes.”
“Mom?”
His expression did not change.
“Evelyn is dead.”
“And Thomas?”
My brother stepped beside me.
Our father looked at him without affection.
“You should have stayed hidden.”
Thomas stared at the screen.
“You caused the crash.”
“I arranged my disappearance.”
“There were 120 innocent people on that plane!”
“Necessary sacrifices.”
The man I remembered would never have said those words.
The father who had taught me to skate, held me when I was sick, and walked me down the aisle no longer existed.
Or perhaps he had never existed.
Gabriel raised his gun toward the monitor.
“You became Elias.”
My father laughed.
“No, brother.”
The underground room became even colder.
Ice spread across the floor.
My father delivered the truth that destroyed the last piece of my old life.
“Elias Vale was never Adrian’s father.”
He looked directly at me.
“Elias Vale was me.”
The screen went black.
Locks engaged around the chamber.
Thomas grabbed my hand.
Gabriel stared at the empty monitor.
And from somewhere behind the frozen wall, a child began crying.
I turned toward the sound.
A small hand struck the other side of the metal door.
Then a little girl screamed:
“Mommy! Please help me!”
Thomas’s face went completely white.
I looked at him.
“Who is that?”
His lips trembled.
“My daughter.”
I stared at my brother.
“You have a daughter?”
He nodded.
“And Victoria…”
His next words were almost impossible to hear.
“Her mother is Maya.”……………..
TO BE CONTINUED IN LAST PART…
