Chapter 6 - The Night Marcus Burned the Past
Marcus went to Hail Group headquarters at 1:03 a.m.
He used the underground garage.
He entered through the executive elevator.
And he had no idea Adrien was watching him from a security room two floors below.
Leah sat beside Adrien, laptop open, tracing every file Marcus touched.
Walter remained at the hospital under strict orders from both his doctor and his son.
"He's deleting vendor communications," Leah said.
"Can we restore them?"
"Already mirrored."
"What else?"
"Pension audit notes. Westlake subsidiary records. Sabrina's consultancy invoices."
Adrien watched Marcus on the monitor.
His best friend moved quickly through his office, packing documents into a leather case.
"He's scared."
"Good," Leah said.
Adrien looked at her.
"You really hate him."
"No. Hate takes energy I stopped giving him months ago."
"Then what do you feel?"
She looked at the screen.
"I want him to become accountable. People confuse that with revenge because accountability is uncomfortable."
Adrien studied her profile.
She was unlike Sabrina in almost every way.
Sabrina had curated every room she entered. Her clothes, her smile, her stories. Everything was polished.
Leah had a pen behind her ear, coffee on her sleeve, and enough anger in her eyes to light a city.
He trusted her more after two days than he trusted almost anyone.
That realization frightened him.
"Don't," Leah said.
"Don't what?"
"Look at me like I'm evidence that trustworthy people still exist."
Adrien blinked.
She met his eyes.
"You don't know me either."
The words were almost identical to what he had told her at Harbor House.
"Fair."
"Trust slowly this time."
"Is that professional advice?"
"Survival advice."
An alarm appeared on her screen.
"There."
Marcus had opened an archive labeled E.H. FOUNDATION — PRIVATE.
Adrien frowned.
"My mother's foundation."
Leah typed rapidly.
"He's searching legacy trust documents."
On the monitor, Marcus removed a file from a cabinet.
Then he took out his phone.
Adrien's phone rang.
Marcus.
Adrien and Leah exchanged a look.
He answered.
"You awake?" Marcus asked.
"I'm at the hospital."
"Of course. Sorry. Walter okay?"
"Stable."
"Good. Listen, I couldn't sleep. I came to the office to finish the Westlake notes."
Adrien watched him slide confidential files into his bag.
"Dedicated."
"You know me."
Yes, Adrien thought.
Finally.
Marcus continued, "I was thinking about Sabrina. She called me upset."
Adrien's jaw tightened.
"Did she?"
"She said you accused her of stealing."
"Interesting that she called you."
Silence.
Then Marcus laughed lightly. "We're friends."
Adrien looked at Leah.
She mouthed, Push him.
"Marcus, were you sleeping with her?"
A long pause.
"What?"
"Simple question."
"No. Absolutely not."
"You sure?"
"Adrien, come on. You're tired. Your dad is sick. Sabrina's probably emotional. Don't blow up your life because you're under pressure."
Adrien felt something inside him settle.
Until that moment, a tiny part of him had wanted Marcus to confess.
To say, I failed you.
To say, I became someone terrible.
To say, I'm sorry.
Instead, Marcus chose another lie.
"You're right," Adrien said.
Marcus exhaled.
"Get some rest. We'll talk tomorrow."
"We will."
Marcus ended the call.
On the monitor, he took a metal lighter from his pocket.
Leah leaned forward.
"What is he doing?"
Marcus carried a stack of paper to the private executive lounge, where an old decorative fireplace had been restored to working condition.
He placed the papers inside.
Adrien stood.
"He's burning them."
"Let security stop him."
"No."
"Adrien—"
"If he thinks the originals are gone, he stops searching for copies."
The flames rose.
Marcus watched them.
Adrien watched Marcus.
The security room felt colder after the flames appeared on-screen.
Adrien could not stop watching the papers curl black at the edges.
"That fireplace has a suppression sensor," he said. "Why hasn't it triggered?"
Leah typed quickly. "Because he disabled the local sensor twelve minutes ago."
"He knows the building systems."
"He helped design the executive floor renovation."
Of course he had.
Marcus had recommended the architect. Chosen the security contractor. Complained about the old wiring. Adrien had trusted him with the literal walls.
Leah looked at the monitor.
"We should stop him before he destroys more originals."
Adrien shook his head.
"You said everything important is mirrored."
"Everything digital. Not every paper file."
"Then security goes in and he knows we've been watching."
"Maybe he already knows."
Adrien turned toward her.
"You think this is bait?"
"I think Marcus is smart enough to be dangerous and arrogant enough to believe he is the smartest person in any room. Those two traits can coexist until the exact moment they become fatal to a plan."
On-screen, Marcus returned to his office and opened the bottom drawer of his desk.
He removed a photograph.
Adrien leaned closer.
It was old.
A beach house. Four people standing in front of it.
Walter.
Eleanor.
Raymond Devereaux.
A teenage Marcus.
"Can you zoom?"
Leah enlarged the image.
On the back, visible when Marcus turned it over, was handwriting.
Summer before everything changed.
Marcus stared at the photograph for almost a full minute.
Then he put it in his coat pocket instead of burning it.
Adrien felt a strange ache.
"He still cares about them."
Leah did not look away from the screen.
"People can care and still become dangerous."
"That would be easier if I could believe he never loved us."
"Why?"
"Because then the last twenty-two years would be a lie."
Leah finally looked at him.
"Maybe some of them were true."
Adrien frowned.
"That doesn't make sense."
"Of course it does. People are not one thing forever. Marcus may have loved you and resented you at the same time. He may have been loyal at twenty-five and corrupt at thirty-five. He may have helped you bury your mother and still hated what she refused to give him."
Adrien stared at the monitor.
"That's worse."
"Yes."
Her answer was gentle.
"But it means you do not have to erase every good memory to accept what he became."
Adrien looked at her for a long moment.
"How do you know how to say exactly the thing I don't want to hear?"
"Years of auditing."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one you're getting at three in the morning."
A silence settled between them.
Adrien noticed how tired she looked.
"When did you last sleep?"
"Irrelevant."
"That means yesterday."
"Focus on your criminal best friend."
"Former best friend."
Leah's expression softened.
"You don't have to decide what to call him tonight."
The sentence struck deeper than she probably intended.
Adrien had spent two days trying to rename every relationship immediately: girlfriend to traitor, brother to criminal, father to liar, stranger to ally.
Maybe grief did not obey labels that quickly.
He looked back at the screen.
Marcus was carrying another file toward the fire.
"Mirror every camera angle," Adrien said. "And back it up outside the company."
Leah nodded.
"Already doing it."
"Of course you are."
"Try to keep up, billionaire."
Despite everything, Adrien smiled.
On the top page, just before the fire consumed it, a familiar signature became visible.
Eleanor Hail.
Adrien's mother.
He stepped closer to the monitor.
"Zoom in."
Leah froze the frame.
A paragraph above the signature was barely legible.
Contingent successor trustee: Marcus Raymond Devereaux.
Adrien stared.
"Why is Marcus named in my mother's trust?"
Leah's fingers moved across the keyboard.
"I don't know."
By dawn, they did.
The original trust amendment had been drafted twenty-three years earlier, when Adrien was nineteen and Walter was recovering from a serious car accident. Eleanor had named Marcus as an emergency successor trustee because she considered him family.
But that amendment had been revoked the following year.
Marcus had kept the old copy.
And recently, someone had altered a scanned version to make it appear current.
"If Walter were declared incompetent," Leah said, "and if you married Sabrina, then suffered a reputational or legal crisis, Marcus could argue for control of the trust under the falsified amendment."
Adrien looked at the ashes on the security monitor.
"He wasn't trying to steal my company."
Leah shook her head.
"He was trying to inherit your life."
At 6:18 a.m., another alert appeared.
This one came from the silver Mercedes Adrien had given Sabrina.
The car had left her apartment.
The vehicle's navigation system showed no destination, but the traffic telemetry gave them enough.
South on Madison.
West on Fulton.
Then toward the residential district where Marcus lived.
Adrien watched the moving icon on Leah's laptop.
"I bought her that car because she complained her old one was unreliable."
Leah glanced at him. "Do you want me to say something comforting or something useful?"
"Useful."
"The car is not evidence that you were foolish. It is evidence that you were generous to the wrong person. Those are different facts."
Adrien gave her a tired look.
"That sounded suspiciously comforting."
"Don't tell anyone."
The icon stopped at a red light.
Adrien remembered the afternoon he had given Sabrina the keys.
She had covered her mouth, cried, and said nobody had ever done anything so extravagant for her.
Then she had thrown her arms around him in the dealership parking lot.
Marcus had been there.
He had clapped Adrien on the shoulder and said, "You're making the rest of us look bad."
Adrien closed his eyes.
"He watched me give it to her."
Leah knew immediately what he meant.
"Yes."
"They were already together."
"Probably."
"And they stood there letting me believe—"
He stopped.
Leah waited.
Adrien opened his eyes.
"I keep finding moments that changed after the fact."
"That's what happens when a lie collapses. It rewrites old rooms."
"Does it stop?"
"Eventually you get tired of giving them that much editing power."
The car icon moved again.
It turned onto Marcus's street.
Adrien watched it approach the house he had visited hundreds of times.
Christmas dinners.
Football games.
Late-night drinks.
The backyard where Marcus had once thrown him a surprise fortieth birthday party.
Now Sabrina's silver Mercedes entered the driveway.
Leah leaned closer to the screen.
"She's there."
Adrien felt no shock this time.
Only confirmation.
"Good," he said.
Leah looked at him.
"Good?"
"Every time they choose each other now, they choose in front of evidence."
She studied him for a second.
"You're becoming frighteningly calm."
"I'm learning from an auditor."
"Terrible influence."
The car remained running in the driveway.
Then its voice system activated.
Leah's laptop chimed.
A diagnostic audio packet began uploading.
She looked at Adrien.
"This may be the first useful gift that car gives you."
It was heading toward Marcus's house.
Adrien stood.
"She's running to him."
May you like
Leah closed her laptop.
"Then let's see what people say when they think they've already won."
