The hidden room, Isolde's private study, was soundproof. Elara screamed, hammered, and kicked, but the thick, eighty-year-old iron door barely rattled. Frantically, she grabbed the heavy desk chair and slammed it against the wall, hoping to alert someone—Darian, the maintenance staff, or even Seraphina. Nothing. The only response was the chilling, steady blink of the red LED light.
She quickly realized the light wasn't a warning; it was a recording device. She was being watched and recorded right now. The anonymous architect who'd left the note at The Harrington, the person who had written the recent journal entry, or Seraphina—one of them, or perhaps all of them working together, had engineered this moment.
Elara grabbed the diary and shoved it under her jacket. She had to find a way out, and she had to figure out who "Jasper" was. Using her phone, she began inspecting the stone walls, looking for the telltale signs of a secret passage, a hidden vent, anything.
She noticed a faint discoloration in the stone behind the original drafting table. It was the outline of a second door, camouflaged with a century of dust. She used her pry bar to chip away at the edges, her heart pounding a frantic rhythm against her ribs. Finally, a small section of the wall gave way, revealing a narrow, vertical shaft—a ventilation chute leading up to the main roofline. It was a tight fit, but passable.
She squeezed into the shaft, pushing upward, the dusty darkness choking her. It took twenty grueling minutes, scraping knees and tearing clothes, but she eventually reached a small access hatch that opened onto the manor's slate roof.
Elara emerged into the crisp night air, gasping. She was high above the cliff, the Hudson River a ribbon of silver far below. She immediately checked her phone for a signal—still none. As she carefully navigated the slippery tiles back toward a safer exit, she saw Darian's East Wing study, fully lit. He was on the phone, pacing in front of a massive window. She couldn't hear the words, but his gestures were aggressive and frantic.
The sight of him, locked in his own world of crisis, confirmed her suspicion: he was distracted. Seraphina's visit wasn't just a threat; it was a calculated diversion.
When Elara finally managed to sneak back into the main wing, she found Darian's head of security, Victor, waiting for her by the staircase, his face grim.
"Ms. Vance. Mr. Thorne needed to leave immediately. Unforeseen board emergency back in the city," Victor said, his eyes scanning her dusty, disheveled appearance without judgment. "He left instructions for you. All non-essential staff have been dismissed. You are the only civilian on the premises. Stay in your wing. Do not leave the house."
"Where did he go?" Elara asked, her chest tight with foreboding.
"The Thorne Industries board called an emergency meeting. Seraphina Voss presented a lawsuit alleging gross negligence regarding the sale of The Harrington, claiming Darian deliberately purchased it under pretenses to sabotage her current development projects. It's a professional nuclear strike, timed perfectly to distract him."
Perfectly timed. Elara felt a chill. The trap in the hidden room, the explosive diary entry, Darian's departure—it was all connected. Seraphina wasn't just a rival; she was the clean-up crew for a deeper family conspiracy.
Alone in the echoing, silent manor, Elara returned to the library. She pulled out the diary and laid it flat, focusing on the last line: ...I found him in the woods. He says his name is Jasper. He says he saw everything...
Jasper. Who was he?
Using the archives Darian had provided, Elara pulled up the records related to the West Wing collapse. Most of the documents were standard, until she found a witness deposition. A groundskeeper, called in for questioning after the collapse, reported seeing a strange man near the quarry road just before the incident.
His name was Jasper Cole.
The deposition was brief. Cole claimed he saw a structural engineer, not Isolde, tampering with the supports hours before the collapse. Cole had been dismissed by Caspian Thorne's lawyer as a "confused, unreliable witness." But the final line of the deposition caught Elara's breath. Jasper Cole testified that the engineer had been following Darian Thorne's father, who was then a young man named Alexander Thorne.
Elara collapsed into a dusty armchair. Darian hadn't been honest. His father, Alexander, wasn't just covering up a design flaw; he was likely involved in the collapse. And Darian knew, or at least highly suspected, that his father was the true killer.
She took out her camera to photograph the deposition and the diary entry—evidence she could use to expose the entire Thorne legacy and save Darian from the web of lies he was tangled in. As she focused the lens on the document, her camera screen flashed, showing not just the paper, but its reflection in the polished surface of the mahogany table.
In the reflection, she saw something she'd missed entirely. Etched into the wood of the original drafting table, barely visible under the dust, was a meticulous, almost invisible schematic. It wasn't a blueprint of the manor, but of a specific piece of machinery—a gear and pulley system designed to lock a massive central mechanism.
Elara realized with sickening certainty that Isolde's hidden room wasn't just a study; it was the control center for something.
She looked at the desk, then at the access to the ventilation shaft she had just used. The original air duct was massive, leading directly to the manor's central, unused chimney. She followed the diagram in her mind—the chimney wasn't venting smoke; it was a vertical channel for a huge, counterweighted mechanism.
The hidden room, the "architect's study," was directly above the main vault, the place where the original ledger would have been kept. Elara had been right: she wasn't restoring the house; she was completing a trap. The renovations Darian claimed were "security upgrades" in the East Wing must have been the final steps in reactivating this old mechanism.
She looked again at the diagram etched on the table. It showed a keystone, identical in size and shape to the one in The Harrington, which was designed to trigger the system. And the note Darian had received? "The keystone holds the key to the manor's dead weight."
It wasn't a key to finding the ledger; it was the key to completing the cover-up.
Elara jumped up, a horrifying clarity settling over her. Someone had stolen the ledger, replaced it with the dummy note, and led Darian into the crypt at The Harrington just long enough to plant the final piece of evidence (the diary) in the hidden room here. Now, with Darian distracted by Seraphina's lawsuit, the real conspirator was free to complete the final act of destruction.
She checked her watch: 11:30 PM. The East Wing construction site was eerily silent. She had to disable the mechanism before someone could trigger it. If she failed, the secret of Isolde, the death of Darian's mother, and perhaps Darian himself, would be buried forever beneath the rubble of Thorne Manor.
Elara rushed toward the East Wing, only to stop dead in her tracks at the massive, shadowed archway. The air was cold, sterile, and silent. There was no sign of life, no construction tools, no Victor. But on the floor, perfectly centered in the moonlight, was a single, crisp, new sheet of paper.
It was a flight itinerary. A private jet, owned by Thorne Industries, had just landed in Teterboro. The passenger listed was not Darian, but Alexander Thorne, Darian's father. He was here, in the manor, tonight.