Chapter 12 - BLACKBIRD HOUSE
The vehicle rolled to a stop.
Engine dead.
Phones dead.
GPS gone.
Vincent looked at Damian.
“Signal jammer.”
They were being watched.
Damian stepped out.
The road to Blackbird House stretched through dense trees.
Snow from the previous night still clung to the ground.
He started walking.
Vincent followed.
Two miles later, they saw the lodge.
One light upstairs.
The front door open.
Inside, Raymond lay against the wall.
Alive.
Barely.
Damian crouched beside him.
“Where’s Noah?”
Raymond opened his eyes.
“They moved him.”
“Emma?”
“Still with him.”
“Who?”
Raymond laughed painfully.
“You’ll never believe me.”
“Try me.”
“Your father.”
Damian stopped.
“My father is dead.”
Raymond looked at him.
“No.”
The word detonated inside the room.
Damian stepped backward.
“You’re delirious.”
“Your father staged his death.”
“Why?”
“Because Sofia found the ledger.”
Damian shook his head.
He had buried August Hawthorne four years ago.
Attended the funeral.
Signed the estate documents.
Watched the coffin lowered.
Another closed coffin.
A pattern.
Raymond continued.
“August built Black Crown.”
“I know.”
“No. You know the organization.”
Raymond struggled for breath.
“Black Crown wasn’t a ledger. It was a network.”
Judges.
Banks.
Ports.
Police.
Private contractors.
“Your father believed the only way to protect it was to disappear.”
“And Sofia?”
“She discovered he was alive.”
Damian felt sick.
“That’s why she died?”
Raymond looked away.
“Not exactly.”
“Tell me.”
“She tried to expose him.”
“So he killed her.”
“No.”
“Then where is she?”
Raymond’s eyes filled with something close to regret.
“I don’t know.”
A floorboard creaked upstairs.
Damian drew his weapon.
Vincent moved toward the stairs.
A woman appeared.
Mrs. Hargrove.
Hands shaking.
Alive.
“Don’t shoot.”
Damian lowered the weapon.
“Where is Emma?”
“They took her twenty minutes ago.”
“Who?”
Hargrove whispered—
“August.”
Damian closed his eyes.
His father.
Alive.
Hunting his grandson.
Every betrayal suddenly rearranged itself.
Victoria had not created the conspiracy.
Raymond had not created it.
They had been orbiting an older monster.
Hargrove reached into her coat.
Vincent raised his gun.
She froze.
“It’s a key.”
Damian held out his hand.
She gave him a small brass key.
“Sofia gave this to me before the crash.”
“For what?”
“She said I would know when Noah was old enough.”
“He’s eighteen months.”
“I don’t think she meant his age.”
Hargrove pointed toward the fireplace.
Damian found a locked compartment beneath the stone.
The key fit.
Inside was a music box.
Black wood.
Silver bird engraved on the lid.
Damian recognized it instantly.
Sofia used to play it beside Noah’s crib.
He opened it.
The lullaby began.
Soft.
Broken.
Under the mechanism was a memory drive.
Vincent exhaled.
“The ledger.”
Damian removed it.
“No.”
A handwritten note lay beneath it.
THE LEDGER IS NOT HERE.
Below:
THE PROOF IS IN THE CHILD’S NAME.
Damian stared.
Rebecca’s earlier words returned.
Sofia had put something in Noah’s name.
Not a trust.
Not shares.
Something else.
Vincent looked at the note.
“What does that mean?”
Damian suddenly remembered Noah’s birth certificate.
Sofia insisted on two middle names.
Noah James Crown Hawthorne.
Damian had laughed about how formal it sounded.
Crown.
He had never questioned why.
Hargrove whispered—
“An encryption key.”
Sofia had hidden the access phrase in Noah’s legal identity.
Damian looked at the memory drive.
The ledger was not physically stored anywhere.
It was encrypted online.
And Noah’s name unlocked it.
Then a phone began ringing upstairs.
A landline.
Damian answered.
Emma’s voice came through.
“Damian?”
He closed his eyes.
“Emma.”
“I’m okay.”
“Noah?”
“He’s with me.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
A man’s voice interrupted.
“Hello, son.”
Damian’s entire body went rigid.
Four years since he had heard it.
But he recognized it instantly.
August Hawthorne.
His dead father.
“Bring me the drive.”
Damian stared at the music box.
“And if I don’t?”
“You lose the nanny.”
A pause.
“And your son grows up without either parent.”
Damian’s voice became ice.
“You touch him and I burn everything you built.”
May you like
August laughed.
“That’s exactly what Sofia said.”
