Claire raced through the mansion with the recorder in her hand, Jason close behind.
In the west wing, she discovered the recorder was dead—but inside it was a memory card.
Jason saw it.
His polite mask vanished.
“That card belongs to me,” he said.
Claire smashed a wall sconce, threw the corridor into darkness, and escaped through a hidden panel. The passage twisted behind the walls, showing her secret views into the mansion.
She saw Dr. Vale with Mrs. Lang.
She heard Jason hunting her.
At last, the passage opened into Ethan’s room.
Claire rushed to his side.
“I found it,” she whispered. “I have the card.”
Ethan struggled to speak.
“Not… Jason.”
Claire froze.
“I know. Vale too.”
Ethan shook his head weakly.
With enormous effort, he wrote one word on a notepad.
MOTHER.
Claire stared at him.
“Your mother is dead.”
Then the bedroom door opened.
Jason entered with Dr. Vale.
Between them stood the woman from the portrait.
Ethan’s mother.
Alive.
Elegant. Cold. Powerful.
Lady Ashbourne smiled gently.
“My poor boy.”
Jason was not the master of Blackwood House.
He was only her weapon.
Claire hid the card in her fist, but Lady Ashbourne held out her hand.
“The card, Miss Claire.”
Claire lied. “It’s already copied.”
Lady Ashbourne laughed softly. “Brave enough to be inconvenient.”
Ethan’s eyes shifted toward the fireplace.
Claire followed his gaze and saw a tiny red light blinking behind a bronze clock.
She realized the recorder had been a decoy.
There was another device.
A transmitter.
She grabbed it just as Lady Ashbourne ordered Jason to stop her.
But before anyone could act, men in dark suits burst into the room.
For one second, Claire thought help had arrived.
Then one of the men bowed to Lady Ashbourne.
“The transmission was intercepted, my lady.”
Claire’s hope collapsed.
Lady Ashbourne smiled.
“You see? This is why mothers worry.”
Then Ethan pressed something into Claire’s palm.
A small silver key.
One word was engraved on it:
Crypt.
For the first time, fear touched Lady Ashbourne’s face.
And far beneath the mansion, something began knocking from inside the family crypt.
Claire used the key and uncovered what Ethan had hidden below the house: files, recordings, names, payments, and proof that the Ashbourne empire was built on stolen money, falsified medical reports, and arranged accidents.
But the greatest shock was not Jason.
It was Ethan’s father.
Nathaniel Ashbourne was supposed to be dead.
He was not.
He had been controlling everything from the shadows.
Jason, Dr. Vale, even Lady Ashbourne’s silence—everything led back to him.
That night, Nathaniel appeared on every screen in the mansion.
Older now, but very much alive.
He smiled at Ethan.
“Back from the grave before I returned from mine. Dramatic.”
Ethan gripped his cane, barely able to stand.
“What do you want?”
Nathaniel’s answer was simple.
“What I built.”
But Vivian Ashbourne, Ethan’s grandmother, knew his old hiding place: the glass greenhouse at the edge of the estate.
Inside, they found ledgers, drives, passports, and photographs.
One photograph made Claire stop breathing.
Her mother.
In a hospital bed.
Nathaniel standing beside her.
Then glass shattered.
Men attacked.
Claire and Ethan fled into the rain.
A black SUV slammed into the greenhouse wall.
Nathaniel stepped out, smiling, holding Claire’s mother’s silver locket.
PART 3
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