Chapter 2 - THE SECRET BENEATH MERCER GROUP
Elias stared at the phone.
For several seconds, he forgot Marcus was standing beside him.
Forgot the black yacht below.
Forgot Serena.
Forgot everything except the sentence Leonard Voss had just spoken.
“Your wife came to Charleston four years ago because someone inside your company stole something from her family.”
Elias’s voice dropped.
“What did they steal?”
Leonard didn’t answer immediately.
“Stay where you are.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“I’m five minutes away.”
“Then answer it in five words.”
Another pause.
“A port.”
Elias frowned.
“What?”
“Not literally the concrete and cranes. Control of it.”
Marcus moved closer.
Elias put the call on speaker.
Leonard heard the change.
“What are you doing?”
“Marcus is here.”
“Get him out.”
“No.”
“Elias.”
“You’ve lied to me for four years. You don’t get to decide who stays in the room anymore.”
That finally silenced him.
Elias looked toward Charleston Harbor.
Pier Nine sat beneath the windows of Mercer Group like it always had.
Warehouses.
Container yards.
Rail connections.
Deep-water access.
For eight years, Elias had treated the terminal as the foundation of his company’s expansion.
It was the acquisition that turned Mercer Group from a regional freight operator into an international logistics company.
His father had negotiated the original purchase before dying.
Leonard had completed it afterward.
Elias suddenly felt sick.
“Pier Nine?”
Leonard exhaled.
“Yes.”
Marcus swore.
Elias tightened his grip on the phone.
“Pier Nine belonged to Serena’s family?”
“Through Vale-Marconi Maritime.”
“I’ve never heard that name.”
“You weren’t supposed to.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means your father purchased control from people who had no legal right to sell it.”
The office seemed to tilt.
Elias slowly turned from the window.
“My father stole it?”
“No.”
The answer came immediately.
That mattered.
“Then who did?”
“I said I would explain when I arrive.”
Elias glanced at Marcus.
Marcus was already walking toward the conference table where his laptop sat.
“Don’t,” Leonard snapped.
Marcus stopped.
Elias frowned.
“You can see him?”
“No.”
“Then how did you know what he was doing?”
Silence.
Marcus looked at the ceiling.
Then at the television.
Then at the small black camera mounted above the conference-room display.
His expression changed.
He crossed the room and ripped the camera cable from the wall.
Leonard cursed.
Elias felt cold.
“You’ve been watching my office?”
“It’s a corporate security system.”
“You installed it.”
“For liability purposes.”
“Without telling me?”
“You approved the security upgrade.”
“I approved cameras in common areas.”
Marcus stared at Elias.
“There’s no camera listed in this room.”
Leonard’s voice sharpened.
“Stop touching things.”
That was the wrong thing to say.
Marcus grabbed the device and twisted it loose.
Behind the camera was a second wire.
Not part of the building system.
Marcus looked at Elias.
“This is transmitting somewhere else.”
Elias’s pulse accelerated.
“Leonard.”
The attorney was no longer pretending.
“Do not do anything until I arrive.”
The call ended.
Elias stared at the screen.
Then he looked at Marcus.
“Lock the floor.”
Marcus immediately moved.
He called security.
No answer.
He tried again.
Nothing.
“That’s strange.”
Elias stepped toward his office door.
The hallway outside had gone quiet.
Too quiet.
Twenty minutes earlier, assistants had been moving between conference rooms.
Phones had been ringing.
Executives had been arguing about the yacht outside.
Now the fourteenth floor sounded empty.
Marcus came beside him.
“Don’t open it.”
Elias looked through the glass.
Nothing moved.
Then every light on the floor went out.
The emergency system turned red.
A low alarm began pulsing.
Not the fire alarm.
Something else.
Marcus whispered,
“Server lockdown.”
Elias looked at him.
“How do you know?”
“Because we tested it last year.”
The secure records room was three floors below them.
Old acquisitions.
Original company data.
Archived transaction systems.
Exactly the kind of material Leonard had told them not to search.
Elias reached for his phone.
No signal.
Marcus checked his.
“Dead.”
Then they heard footsteps.
Slow.
Approaching.
Not from the elevators.
From the stairwell.
Elias looked around the conference room.
There was nothing useful except chairs, bottles, and an absurdly expensive marble table.
Marcus grabbed a fire extinguisher from the hall wall.
Elias looked at him.
“You planning to put somebody out?”
“Depends how flammable they are.”
Despite everything, Elias almost laughed.
The stairwell door opened.
A man stepped out wearing a Mercer Group security jacket.
Elias recognized him.
“Dawson?”
The man turned.
Ryan Dawson had worked nights in building security for almost two years.
He was holding a black equipment bag.
“What’s happening?”
Dawson hesitated.
“Electrical problem.”
“Then why are you carrying a demolition bag?”
The guard’s eyes flicked toward the stairs.
A second man appeared behind him.
Elias had never seen him before.
That was enough.
“Marcus.”
Marcus moved first.
The fire extinguisher struck the second man squarely in the chest.
He crashed into the stairwell door.
Dawson reached beneath his jacket.
Elias drove into him before he could pull whatever was there.
They slammed against the wall.
The black bag fell.
Something metal rolled across the floor.
A pistol.
Silenced.
Elias stopped breathing.
Dawson punched him hard enough to split his lip.
Marcus sprayed the fire extinguisher directly into the second man’s face.
The hallway filled with white powder.
Someone shouted.
Elias drove his shoulder into Dawson again.
The guard went down.
Marcus kicked the pistol away.
“Run.”
They did.
Not toward the elevators.
Toward the opposite stairwell.
Behind them, another door slammed open.
More footsteps.
Elias and Marcus raced downward.
Thirteen.
Twelve.
Eleven.
At the tenth floor landing, Marcus stopped.
“What?”
“The server room.”
“Leonard wants something destroyed.”
“And if we leave?”
“He gets it.”
Elias looked downward.
Then upward.
Footsteps echoed somewhere above.
He made the decision.
“Come on.”
They entered the eleventh floor.
Emergency lights painted everything red.
The records department was empty.
At the far end, smoke seeped beneath a locked door.
Marcus’s expression changed.
“They already started.”
Elias grabbed the fire extinguisher.
Together they forced the door.
Heat struck them.
A metal trash container burned beside the archive shelves.
But the fire wasn’t the real problem.
Someone had connected a device to the old server rack.
A small screen counted backward.
00:41.
00:40.
Marcus stared.
“That is not good.”
“Bomb?”
“Could be a drive destroyer.”
“Could?”
“Would you prefer I investigate while standing beside it?”
Elias yanked the cable from the server.
Nothing happened.
00:35.
Marcus pointed to the equipment cart.
“Move.”
They shoved the entire cart toward the door.
Heavy.
Too heavy.
The countdown continued.
00:19.
00:18.
Elias pulled.
Marcus pushed.
The wheels caught against the threshold.
“Again.”
00:12.
They heaved together.
The cart broke free.
It rolled into the hallway.
“GO.”
They ran.
The explosion wasn’t enormous.
It didn’t destroy the floor.
But it threw both men forward.
Glass shattered.
A pressure wave slammed Elias against the wall.
His ears screamed.
For several seconds he couldn’t hear Marcus shouting.
Then the sound returned.
“…Elias!”
“I’m okay.”
He wasn’t.
Blood ran from his forehead.
Smoke filled the hallway.
Sprinklers activated.
Marcus crawled toward the server room.
“What are you doing?”
“The backup array.”
“Forget it.”
“No.”
Marcus reached beneath the rack.
He pulled out a small black drive.
“Old disaster backup. Separate system.”
Elias stared at it.
“You think that survived?”
“We’re about to find out.”
They made it downstairs through the parking garage.
Outside, police vehicles were arriving.
Someone had finally triggered the building alarm.
Elias expected Leonard.
Instead, a black SUV stopped across the street.
Two men stepped out.
Dark suits.
Moretti crest on the lapel.
Then Damiano Moretti emerged from the rear seat.
Every police officer nearby noticed him.
Nobody approached.
Damiano looked at the blood on Elias’s face.
Then at the smoke coming from Mercer Group headquarters.
His expression did not change.
He crossed the street.
Marcus took one step backward.
Elias stayed where he was.
Damiano stopped three feet away.
For the first time, Elias stood face-to-face with the man who had knelt before his ex-wife less than an hour earlier.
Damiano’s eyes were cold.
“Mr. Mercer.”
“Mr. Moretti.”
“I understand someone tried to destroy your records.”
Elias glanced toward the burning floor.
“You understand quickly.”
“I survive quickly.”
Damiano looked at Marcus.
Then at the drive in his hand.
His gaze returned to Elias.
“Where is Leonard Voss?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
Something passed through Damiano’s expression.
Not surprise.
Confirmation.
Elias saw it.
“You suspected him.”
“We suspected many people.”
“Serena suspected him?”
Damiano’s face hardened at the use of her name.
“She suspected someone close to you.”
Elias swallowed.
“Did she marry me because of Pier Nine?”
Damiano studied him for a long moment.
Then said,
“You should ask her that.”
“That sounds like yes.”
“It is not my story to tell.”
Elias laughed once.
Bitterly.
“That seems to be everyone’s favorite sentence.”
Damiano stepped closer.
“I will tell you one thing.”
Elias said nothing.
“When Serena arrived in Charleston four years ago, she intended to remain six weeks.”
Elias’s breathing changed.
“She stayed because of you.”
The words landed harder than he expected.
Damiano’s gaze lowered briefly to Elias’s wedding-ring finger.
The ring was gone.
“You were not the reason she came.”
Then his eyes returned to Elias’s.
“But you were the reason she stopped leaving.”
Elias couldn’t speak.
Damiano turned.
One of his men opened the SUV door.
Before entering, Damiano looked back.
“And now someone has tried to erase whatever remains inside your company.”
He nodded toward the drive Marcus held.
“So I suggest you learn very quickly which men around you are loyal.”
He paused.
“Because whoever did this already knows Serena is home.”
Damiano entered the vehicle.
The SUV pulled away.
Marcus stood silently beside Elias.
Then his phone regained signal.
It began exploding with notifications.
News reports.
Calls.
Messages.
One notification appeared above the others.
A photograph.
Sent from an unknown number.
Elias opened it.
Serena stood on the upper deck of The Sovereign.
The photograph had clearly been taken from somewhere high above the harbor.
A rooftop.
Across the water.
A small red circle had been digitally drawn around Serena’s chest.
Below it were four words.
YOU SHOULD HAVE LET HER LEAVE.
Elias’s blood turned cold.
He looked toward the harbor.
Then toward the rooftops surrounding Pier Nine.
And somewhere far below the noise of police sirens, one thought became terrifyingly clear.
The divorce had not freed Serena from danger.
May you like
It had exposed her.
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