Chapter 4 - The Red Door
“Who took them?” I demanded.
Harrison said nothing.
Mateo pulled him away from the table.
Victor remained calm.
“You’re wasting time.”
I turned to him.
“You planned this.”
“I plan everything.”
“Then you planned for Harrison to fail?”
That wiped the smile from his face.
I looked at Harrison.
“You know what happens next, don’t you?”
His breathing changed.
Victor snapped, “Keep your mouth shut.”
I placed my phone on the table.
Twenty-seven minutes remained.
“Harrison, Victor will sacrifice you before he sacrifices himself.”
“That’s not true.”
I pointed at Victor.
“Ask him whether your immunity was included in his exit plan.”
Harrison looked at him.
Victor didn’t answer.
That was enough.
“The team leader is Adrian Cross,” Harrison said.
Mateo froze.
Cross was one of my senior security officers.
A man I had trusted for nine years.
“Location?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
Victor laughed.
“You’ve lost.”
“No,” Harrison said suddenly. “There might be a way.”
Victor’s head snapped toward him.
Harrison pointed toward Luca’s journal.
“The missing page.”
“What about it?”
“Luca hid evidence in a physical archive. Victor spent years searching for it.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
Then something clicked.
Emma’s notebook.
The strange drawings.
The red door.
Clara had told me Luca used drawings when he was afraid records could be intercepted.
I grabbed my phone.
“Mateo, pull the lobby surveillance from this morning.”
He brought the footage onto the wall display.
We zoomed in on Emma’s notebook as she turned the pages.
Wolves.
Buildings.
A bridge.
A red door.
Then another image.
A clock.
11:17.
Mateo stared at it.
“What does that mean?”
I remembered.
Luca and I had spent summers at an old Vale shipping warehouse on the Boston waterfront.
Building 11.
Loading bay 17.
The entrance had once been painted red.
“Boston.”
Mateo understood immediately.
“Warehouse Eleven.”
Victor stood so quickly his chair fell backward.
That confirmed it.
I called the kidnapper.
Cross answered.
“Twenty-three minutes.”
“I’ll give you the journal.”
“Good decision.”
“But Emma comes to me first.”
Cross laughed.
“You don’t make the rules.”
“No. Victor does.”
Silence.
I continued.
“And Victor is sitting across from me.”
Victor stared.
“If anything happens to Clara or Emma, I turn Victor, Harrison, Luca’s journal, and every financial record in this building over to federal investigators.”
“You’re bluffing.”
“Ask Victor.”
I pushed the phone toward him.
Victor didn’t speak.
Cross understood.
“Warehouse Eleven,” he finally said. “Come alone.”
“I’ll be there.”
The call ended.
Mateo shook his head.
“You’re not going alone.”
“I know.”
For the first time, Harrison looked confused.
“What are you planning?”
I closed Luca’s journal.
“Something my brother tried to teach me thirteen years ago.”
“What?”
“Trust evidence, not powerful men.”
Within minutes, copies of Luca’s journal were secured with outside counsel and law enforcement contacts independent of Vale Global.
If I disappeared, everything would be released.
Victor finally looked worried.
“You’ll destroy the company.”
“I’ll destroy whatever part of it requires dead children to survive.”
Then I leaned toward him.
“And rebuild the rest.”
Warehouse Eleven had been abandoned for eighteen years.
Rain hammered the waterfront when I arrived.
I carried Luca’s journal in one hand.
No visible security.
No weapon.
Cross stepped from the darkness.
Behind him stood two men.
Clara was near the old loading platform.
Emma stood beside her.
“Uncle Sebastian!”
“I’m here.”
Cross held out his hand.
“The journal.”
“Release them.”
“First the book.”
Emma suddenly shouted.
“The red door!”
Everyone looked at her.
Behind a rusted shelving unit was a faded red metal door.
Cross turned.
That was his mistake.
Mateo’s team moved.
Everything happened quickly.
Lights flooded the warehouse.
Cross’s men dropped their weapons when they realized the building was surrounded.
Cross grabbed Emma.
“Back off!”
I stopped.
Emma looked at me.
Her face was frightened.
Then she looked toward the red door.
“Daddy said wolves don’t hunt alone.”
Cross hesitated.
Clara shoved his arm away from Emma.
Mateo closed the distance and pulled Cross back.
Within seconds, Emma was running toward me.
I caught her.
“You came.”
“I promised.”
Clara hurried over.
“Sebastian, the door.”
We opened it.
Behind it was a narrow storage room.
Inside stood an old steel safe.
Emma opened her notebook.
Taped beneath the back cover was a small brass key.
Clara stared.
“I never knew.”
Emma shrugged.
“Daddy’s letter said I should never remove it until I met the other wolf.”
I looked at the key.
Luca had known.
He had prepared everything.
I opened the safe.
Inside were drives, ledgers, photographs, signed instructions, and the missing page from the journal.
At the top was one sentence.
May you like
IF SEBASTIAN IS READING THIS, HE FINALLY WOKE UP.
I had to sit down.
