Chapter 3 - The Geometry of Secrets
I spent the next forty-eight hours in the shadows. The city, which once felt like a place I had escaped, now felt like a giant machine designed to keep me out. I studied the map Silas had given me. It wasn't just a layout of pipes; it was a blueprint of the city’s underbelly—a series of tunnels that connected the Vane estate to the old library and, inexplicably, the city’s central bank.
The medallion, which I kept hidden in my inner jacket pocket, felt heavy against my chest, a constant reminder that my father had lived a double life.
I staked out the house from a distance. Evelyn wasn't alone. Men in tailored black suits arrived and departed with high-frequency regularity. They carried heavy briefcases and moved with the clinical precision of people who weren't just protecting a home, but guarding an asset.
My hunger and exhaustion were overridden by a singular, cold focus. If this house was a vault, and my stepmother was the warden, then the "truth of my legacy" wasn't an inheritance of money. It was an inheritance of power—or perhaps, a secret that could destroy everything she had built.
I found the entry point mentioned on the map: a decommissioned sewer grate obscured by thick vines in the woods bordering the estate.
That night, under the cover of a thunderstorm, I descended into the darkness. The air was foul, metallic, and cold. As I navigated the cramped tunnels, the medallion in my pocket began to vibrate—a subtle, rhythmic pulse that seemed to react to the proximity of the house above.
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I reached the end of the tunnel, where a brick wall stood in my way. According to the map, this was the base of the foundation. I pressed the medallion against a notch in the bricks. With a sound like grinding teeth, the wall began to slide open.
I wasn't in a cellar. I was in a room that looked like an office frozen in time—my father’s private study, hidden beneath the earth.
