Chapter 12 - The Trap in the Courtyard
The ink on the note was still slightly wet. Julian stared at the handwriting, his blood running cold. This wasn't written ten years ago by a ghost from the past; it was written today, by someone who was still inside the mansion—or watching from the shadows just outside.
"Who gave you this?" Julian demanded, looking up at Clara with a fierce intensity that made her step back in alarm.
"I-I don't know, Mr. Julian!" Clara stammered, her eyes wide with fear. "I swear, when I walked out the back door, nobody was there. The envelope was just... jammed into the brass handle. I came back to give it to you immediately because I was scared."
Julian believed her. The genuine terror in the young woman's eyes was unmistakable. He quickly shoved the note into his pocket and turned back toward the hidden floor compartment, his hands moving with desperate urgency. He pulled out the locked wooden box that he had discovered minutes earlier.
"Help me with this," Julian told Clara, placing the box on the mahogany table. "We need to open it before whoever wrote this note realizes we're onto them."
"How do we open it?" Clara asked, stepping closer and peering at the four-digit mechanical dial on the lid. "There's no keyhole."
"It's a combination lock," Julian muttered, his mind racing through dates, numbers, and memories. "My grandfather loved chess. Or maybe dates. Think, Julian, think."
He tried his own birth year—nothing. He tried Thomas’s birth year—the dial refused to budge.
As they struggled with the box, a heavy, distorted sound echoed from outside the tall library windows—the unmistakable crunch of gravel under heavy tires. Julian rushed to the window and pulled back the grimy velvet curtain.
A sleek black sedan had parked directly in the center of the estate courtyard, blocking the main driveway. The driver's door opened, and a tall, familiar figure stepped out into the crisp morning air. It wasn't Detective Vance, and it wasn't one of the police cruisers. It was Victor Vance—Julian’s estranged uncle, who was supposed to be living overseas in Switzerland, managing the international branches of the family's shipping empire.
"Who is that?" Clara asked, looking over Julian's shoulder out the window.
"My uncle Victor," Julian whispered, the color draining completely from his face. "He hasn't set foot in this country in over fifteen years."
"If he's here," Clara said quietly, her voice trembling, "that means he never left. Or he came back the moment the police sirens started."
Julian’s breath hitched as he stared down at his uncle standing by the black sedan. Victor looked up directly toward the second-floor library window, slow and deliberate, removing his sunglasses to reveal a pair of cold, calculating eyes that mirrored the exact evil found in the old ledger.
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Before Julian could step away from the glass, Victor raised his right hand and pointed two fingers directly at the window like a gun, smiling a cold, mirthless smile.
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