The presence of Alexander Thorne, the mastermind behind the entire tragedy, shook Elara to her core. She wasn't just racing against time; she was up against the man who had ordered his wife's murder by destroying part of their home. The thought sent chills down her spine, but it also strengthened her determination. She was no longer just an archivist; she was a guardian of the truth.
Elara slipped into the East Wing, moving through the empty construction site. The security upgrades were much more extensive than Darian had indicated. The walls were stripped down to the studs, exposing raw wires and thick, new steel beams—support for Isolde's central mechanism.
She followed the path of the largest channel, tracing the mechanism from the floor of the secret room up to the massive, hollow central chimney. The channel led down to a deep, underground level she hadn't known existed. The ultimate vault.
Just as she was about to descend, a figure appeared from the shadows at the base of the stairs: Alexander Thorne.
He looked every bit as solid as his son, but while Darian exuded fatigue, Alexander radiated power—a sleek, ruthless confidence that age had only sharpened. He wasn't dressed for travel; he wore a custom smoking jacket and held a glass of amber liquid. He seemed entirely unfazed to see her.
"Ms. Vance. How predictable," Alexander said, his voice smooth like polished metal. "Always poking around where you don't belong. The little restoration artist. My son should have stuck to demolishing relics, not hiring them."
Elara held her ground, gripping the metal pry bar she had brought. "Where is Darian?"
"On his private jet, dealing with the chaos Seraphina so helpfully created. It appears Seraphina and I have similar goals: stopping Darian from digging into the past. But unlike Seraphina, I prefer permanent solutions." Alexander took a sip of his drink. "You were meant to be locked in Isolde's room, reading her lies. You were meant to be the final piece of the cover-up."
"The collapse was no accident," Elara said, her voice tense. "You framed Isolde. You killed your wife to hide your financial crimes, didn't you? Isolde's diary and Jasper Cole's deposition prove it."
Alexander chuckled, a dry, unpleasant sound. "The diary is a forgery. A clever imitation that Isolde's devoted friend—my wife—started out of grief but never finished. Isolde was a nervous wreck, and when she ran, I took the opportunity. The financial crimes were my father's—Caspian's. But I did cause the collapse. My wife was becoming suspicious about where Caspian's ledger was hidden. I simply sped up her demise and buried the manor's secrets forever."
He glanced at the open shaft behind her. "And now, I'm just tidying up. Isolde's original design was brilliant—a master vault meant to seal itself permanently using a counterweight system. The keystone from The Harrington was supposed to be the last piece of the counterweight. Since someone inconveniently stole the ledger and planted a note to draw Darian in, I needed to improvise."
He set his glass on a nearby filing cabinet and walked toward a large, winch-like mechanism in the corner. "The East Wing renovations that Darian funded were merely a substitute for the counterweight. You, Elara, have just given me the chance to execute the final stage."
He pointed to a massive black obsidian stone block hanging high in the chimney shaft. "That is the new keystone. The trigger is electronic. Once it drops, the central vault below, which contains the last of my father's documents, will be sealed forever. And Darian will blame himself for being distracted by Seraphina's lawsuit."
"You want to frame your own son for letting the house collapse and destroying the evidence?" Elara whispered, horrified.
"Darian has inherited my paranoia, not my ruthlessness. He came here looking for a murderer; I'm just making sure he doesn't find the evidence—or the murderer. Now, if you'll excuse me."
Alexander reached for the control panel, but before his hand touched the switch, a low, guttural roar filled the manor.
A flash of motion. A figure tackled Alexander Thorne from the shadows, sending the control panel flying. It was Darian. His suit was torn, his face pale, and he was breathing hard.
"I took Seraphina's jet from the airport right away," Darian growled, pinning his father to the ground. "Victor told me you were here. You lied to me about everything. You killed my mother!"
Alexander laughed, a manic, triumphant sound. "Oh, Darian, my only disappointment is that you couldn't see the family resemblance in your own ruthlessness! I had to clean up my father's mess; now you clean up mine!"
As Darian and his father struggled, the dropped control panel began to spark. The electronic trigger had been damaged. A loud, grinding CLUNK echoed from the shaft. The obsidian counterweight began to fall.
"Elara! The vault is below!" Darian shouted, pushing his father away and scrambling to his feet. "It's a dead-end chamber. If that stone drops, the entire sub-level is sealed for centuries!"
Elara didn't need telling twice. She grabbed the pry bar and sprinted for the sub-level stairs. She knew Darian had been searching for the ledger in the manor's archives, but the final documents were likely in this vault, now beneath a two-ton, free-falling stone.
She plunged down the stairs into a small, cylindrical stone chamber. In the center was a thick steel plate—the vault lid. A deafening scraping noise signaled that the counterweight was close. She had only seconds.
She positioned the heavy pry bar against the edge of the vault lid, trying to force it open. But the stone plate was too heavy, and the mechanism too tight.
"Elara, move! It's too late!" Darian shouted from above. He threw himself down the stairs, landing beside her.
"No, I can stop it!" Elara cried, trying to wedge the pry bar into the mechanism's final locking cog.
Alexander Thorne appeared at the top of the stairs, smiling triumphantly. He picked up a heavy piece of masonry. "It's over, Darian. You chose the wrong side."
The scraping stopped. The obsidian block had nearly reached its limit, but it hadn't dropped fully yet. There was a brief pause, maybe due to a fault in the aging system.
"The keystone," Darian gasped, suddenly grasping the full complexity of Isolde's design. "The real keystone from The Harrington was the safety pin! It had to be manually inserted to lock it in place. Someone removed it to let the system fire!"
Just then, Alexander hurled the masonry debris. It struck Darian on the side of the head. Darian collapsed, slumping against the wall, unconscious.
"Goodbye, son," Alexander said softly.
The system groaned one last time. The obsidian block completed its drop.
The stone vault below Elara slammed shut with the force of an earthquake. Dust, rock, and a torrent of debris rained down, separating Elara from Darian. She stumbled back, hitting the cold stone wall, the air knocked out of her lungs.
She was momentarily blinded by the dust and the force of the final impact. When her vision cleared, the stairs were gone, buried under tons of rubble. The vault was sealed. Darian was trapped on the other side of a newly formed wall of granite debris.
Elara was alone in the dust-filled chamber. She looked up through the settling cloud of plaster. A crack, jagged and wide, ran across the ceiling of the East Wing.
And then she saw it. Above the rubble line, standing where Alexander Thorne had been seconds before, was a new shadow. It was tall and slender, holding a smartphone in its hand. The screen was aimed directly at the disaster zone.
It wasn't Alexander. The shadow turned slightly, revealing the cold, triumphant profile of Seraphina Voss. She hadn't left the city; she had been here the whole time, ensuring the final destruction was fully documented. Now, she was stepping through the remaining rubble, a predatory smile on her face, and approaching the still, unconscious body of Darian Thorne.
Elara was trapped, Darian was incapacitated, and Seraphina, having successfully played the role of both arsonist and witness, now had everything she needed to claim the Thorne empire.