Chapter 7 - The Mortgage on the Past
The afternoon sun was swallowed by a sudden wall of slate-gray clouds as Tessa’s car tore through the city streets, heading away from the financial district and back toward the quiet, tree-lined avenues of Buckhead.
Maya sat in the passenger seat, gripping the door handle so tightly her knuckles were stark white. Her phone was pressed against her ear as she frantically redialed the number for her shop's commercial landlord.
"It's voicemail again," Maya snapped, slamming her phone down onto the console. "Every single line is disconnected. The commercial registry office says the entire block of buildings where my shop sits was bought out at 9:00 AM this morning by a holding company called Veritas Global Trust. The same trust tied to that Zurich ping."
"It's not a coincidence," Tessa said, her eyes locked on the road, her foot pressing harder against the accelerator. "Conrad didn't build this life. He inherited the blueprint from his family, and when they realized he was getting sloppy, they set up a contingency plan. A contingency plan that apparently includes us."
Ten minutes later, the sedan swung into the semicircular driveway of the Buckhead mansion.
Something was wrong before they even cut the engine.
The smart-security perimeter lights—usually glowing a steady, welcoming green—were flashing a rapid, hostile amber. The heavy wrought-iron front gates, which required a master biometric override to open from the outside, were standing wide open, swinging lazily in the damp wind.
Tessa parked the car right at the base of the front steps, cutting the engine.
"Wait in the car, Maya," Tessa commanded, reaching into her handbag and feeling the cold steel of her emergency keys.
"Like hell I'm staying in the car," Maya muttered, pushing her door open and stepping out into the gravel driveway.
They marched up the front steps together and pushed through the heavy oak double doors.
The interior of the house was freezing. The smart-climate system had been overridden, dropping the ambient temperature to sixty degrees. But it wasn't the cold that stopped them in their tracks.
Standing in the center of the grand foyer, leaning casually against the polished banister of the staircase, was a woman in an impeccably tailored cream-colored wool coat, her dark hair pinned back into a flawless chignon. She held a porcelain teacup in her hand, sipping slowly as she looked around the grand hallway with the critical eye of an art appraiser.
May you like
It was the same woman from the photograph in Conrad's private archives—the one Conrad had called a distant cousin, though my father’s old ledgers had listed her under a different, far more dangerous title: The Executor.
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