Chapter 5 - The Object in the Pocket
The small metallic object gleamed under the warm garden sunlight, catching the amber glow of the birthday candles and casting long, erratic reflections across Clara’s pale face. Marcus recoiled instinctively, his hands flying up to shield his head as if expecting a gunshot. But Arthur didn't raise a weapon. Instead, he held up a heavy brass skeleton key—the exact key that unlocked the old mahogany liquor cabinet in the library, where their father had kept his private journals for thirty years.
"You left the heavy artillery in the wrong place, children," Arthur said smoothly, slipping the key back into his pocket with a sickeningly casual motion. "The police already finished their sweep of the ground floor. But they didn't check the library desk drawer. Because I gave them the wrong inventory list."
Clara stared at the pocket where the key had vanished, her jaw tightening until the skin across her cheekbones stretched white. The candles on the birthday cake sputtered as a sudden draft of cold air rushed through the garden, though the surrounding trees remained completely still.
"You think the liquor cabinet is all there is?" Clara asked, her voice dropping into a register so cold it made Marcus shiver. "Dad knew you were laundering the foundation funds through the offshore accounts since the spring of 2018. He didn't keep the ledgers in a book, Arthur. He kept them on a micro-server wired directly into the security system."
Arthur’s eyes narrowed into thin slits. For the first time, a flicker of genuine panic crossed his aging features, though he masked it almost instantly behind a veneer of arrogant disbelief.
"That server was incinerated," Arthur hissed, leaning down until his face was inches from Clara’s bandaged head. "The entire eastern wing reached twelve hundred degrees. Silicon melts, Clara. Data turns to ash."
"Not when it's backed up to an encrypted satellite node every twenty minutes," Clara whispered back, lifting her hand slightly from the cake to point one finger toward the American flag waving gently against the blue sky above the roofline.
Marcus gasped, finally connecting the pieces. The new satellite dish mounted near the chimney wasn't for television. It was an independent uplink.
"You little demon," Arthur muttered, his hand darting out with terrifying speed to grab the edge of the wheelchair handle, shoving the chair hard toward the open stone steps leading down to the lower garden terrace.
May you like
The wheelchair lurched forward violently, the front wheels leaving the ground as they tipped over the edge of the first step. Clara didn't scream. She didn't drop the cake. The candles flared once, blindingly bright, as the smartphone on the tripod captured the exact moment the chair went airborne.
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