Chapter 6 - VAULT NINE
Crown Meridian Tower had eighty-one public floors and three that did not exist on any blueprint.
Marcus led Sebastian and Valerie through a freight tunnel beneath the parking garage.
The silver key fit a steel door marked only with the number nine.
Behind it waited a circular room lined with old computer servers, paper ledgers, and sealed evidence boxes.
Valerie stepped inside first.
“This is what my mother wanted me to find.”
Sebastian examined a wall of photographs.
Judges, senators, bankers, union leaders, and foreign ministers stared back at him.
Red threads connected each face to Ward Meridian subsidiaries.
“This is not a vault,” he said.
“It is a weapon.”
Marcus opened the oldest ledger.
Conrad Ward had recorded every bribe, threat, payoff, and arranged bankruptcy that built his empire.
Daniel Voss had copied the records.
Eleanor had hidden them.
Sebastian found a folder bearing his own name.
Inside was a birth certificate listing a man named Thomas Vale as his father.
Thomas Vale had been Conrad’s closest friend and cofounder.
He had died in an elevator accident before Sebastian was born.
Valerie found another file.
It contained surveillance photographs of her from childhood to the previous week.
Someone had documented every school, every apartment, and every man she had ever dated.
The last page showed her entering Crown Meridian Tower the night before.
Below it was a typed instruction.
ALLOW CONTACT WITH SEBASTIAN.
Sebastian read it twice.
“We were arranged.”
Valerie’s face emptied.
A speaker hidden in the ceiling clicked on.
Conrad Ward’s voice filled the room.
“Not arranged, son.”
Sebastian looked upward.
“Tested.”
May you like
The steel door slammed shut behind them.
Gas began hissing from the vents.
