Chapter 13 - The House of Ashford
The Ashford estate stood above Lake Michigan, empty and decaying behind locked gates.
My father had died in his library with a glass of whiskey beside him. The official cause was cardiac arrest.
After everything I had learned, I no longer believed anything official.
I entered alone, exactly as Victor demanded.
Jonas and Detective Reyes monitored me from outside through a transmitter hidden beneath my shirt.
Dust covered the marble floor.
Portraits of dead Ashford men watched from the walls, each wearing the same expression of inherited certainty.
Victor waited in the library.
He looked exhausted but alive. A healing wound crossed his temple, and his left hand remained bandaged from Madison’s gunshot.
“You killed Gabriel,” he said.
The satisfaction in his voice nearly destroyed my restraint.
“Yes.”
“Does Elena blame you?”
“She blames everyone.”
“She’ll never forgive you.”
“Perhaps.”
Victor poured whiskey into two glasses.
“For Father,” he said.
“I stopped drinking to dead men.”
He smiled.
“You came for revenge.”
“I came because you asked.”
“No armed team?”
“You would have seen them.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
He walked toward the fireplace.
Above it hung my father’s portrait.
Victor pressed a hidden switch beneath the mantel, opening a compartment in the wall.
Inside were the missing Haven ledger and several digital drives.
“You saved it from the river,” I said.
“I switched the case before I dropped it.”
“What do you want?”
“The Ashford trust.”
“It belongs to Gabriel’s estate.”
“Which now passes back to you.”
“For the moment.”
“You will transfer controlling ownership to me. In exchange, Elena receives the ledger and proof that you never authorized the murders.”
He held up one of the drives.
“Father recorded everything. He trusted no one, including Crane.”
“Why give me proof?”
“Because I don’t want prison. I want what should have been mine.”
“You tried to kill my wife and son.”
“You were never supposed to discover the poisoning.”
“That improves nothing.”
“It was business.”
The phrase belonged to our father.
I finally understood that Victor had spent his entire life resenting the man while becoming his perfect successor.
“Did you kill him?” I asked.
Victor’s smile faded.
“Our father?”
“Yes.”
He looked toward the portrait.
“He planned to remove me from the companies. He said I lacked discipline.”
“So you gave him digoxin.”
“Dr. Vale did.”
“You use other people’s hands for every murder.”
“That is what powerful men do.”
“No. That is what frightened men do.”
Anger flashed in his eyes.
He placed the drive on the desk.
“Sign the transfer.”
A legal document waited beside it.
I picked up the pen.
“Before I sign, tell me why you destroyed my marriage.”
“Elena made you weak.”
“She made me human.”
“Exactly.”
I signed the first page.
Victor leaned closer to inspect it.
“Initial the bottom.”
I did.
Then the speakers hidden throughout the library activated.
Elena’s voice filled the room.
“Our son is alive, Victor.”
He froze.
A video screen descended from the ceiling.
Elena appeared from the Minnesota facility holding Gabriel against her chest.
Victor stared in disbelief.
“You lied.”
“Yes,” I said.
He reached for his gun.
I overturned the desk.
The first shot struck the wall.
I drove my shoulder into his chest, and we crashed against the fireplace.
Victor hit the wound in my shoulder. Pain exploded through my arm.
He raised the pistol toward my face.
The library windows shattered.
Jonas and federal agents entered from three directions.
Victor dragged me backward and pressed the weapon beneath my jaw.
“No one moves!”
Detective Reyes aimed at his head.
“You have nowhere to go.”
Victor laughed.
“This house has more exits than you know.”
He pulled the fireplace switch again.
The floor beneath us opened.
We fell into darkness.
I landed on a stone staircase beneath the library.
Victor disappeared through a tunnel leading toward the lake.
I followed despite the pain.
The passage ended inside a boathouse.
An engine roared.
Victor stood aboard a black speedboat holding the ledger and drives.
I fired at the engine.
The bullet struck the fuel line.
Gasoline poured across the deck.
Victor fired back.
A spark ignited near the stern.
Flames rose instantly.
“Jump!” I shouted.
Victor looked at the burning boat, then at me.
For one moment, he seemed like the frightened younger brother I remembered.
“Damian.”
I reached out.
“Take my hand.”
He moved toward me.
Then his expression hardened.
“You always get to be the hero.”
The fuel tank exploded.
The blast threw me into the freezing lake.
Jonas pulled me from the water moments later.
The boathouse burned until dawn.
This time, divers found Victor’s body.
The ledger survived inside a fireproof case that washed against the rocks.
But one digital drive was missing.
The drive containing my father’s private recordings.
Someone had taken it before the explosion.
Security footage later showed the thief leaving through the estate’s north gate.
May you like
Madison Chen had escaped from hospital custody.
And she possessed the last secrets of the Ashford family.
