The message came in at exactly 11:38 p.m.
Zade out.
Arthur didn’t speak. He just turned his phone screen toward David, who gave a sharp nod. That was the cue.
No words were needed now.
Under the cover of night, they slipped through the trees flanking the estate, sticking to the shadows like muscle memory. The Hales’ mansion loomed above them—tall, sleek, stone and steel, eerily quiet. No alarms. No barking dogs. Just the occasional buzz of motion lights that flicked on too late to catch them.
David led the way to the back entrance, a narrow service corridor behind the eastern wing. Arthur followed, heart thudding as they pressed against the wall.
Then, as if by magic, the door clicked open.
Standing behind it was a woman in a maid uniform. Pale, slender, face sharp with fear and resolve.
Arthur blinked. “How the hell—?”
David only smirked. “Watch and learn, Sherlock.”
Arthur groaned. “If you call me that one more time…”
“Then quit acting like one.”
The maid didn’t speak. She only beckoned them inside quickly, then shut the door with a quiet click behind them.
She leaned close, whispering, “The archive is two floors down. Through the basement. At the end, there’s a wall with a hidden door. There’s a lock and a panel. I have the key…” She pressed a small iron key into David’s hand. “But not the code.”
David accepted it without question. “That’ll do.”
They didn’t ask her name. Safer for everyone that way.
Arthur gave her a brief nod of thanks, then followed David down the back staircase. Carpeted. Narrow. No creaks.
Every few steps, they paused, ears strained for voices or footsteps. But the mansion was silent.
When they reached the basement floor, the air shifted—cooler, still, somehow older. Like the house itself was holding its breath.
Arthur scanned the wide concrete space, filled with old furniture, dusty shelves, crates sealed and labeled in faint ink. “Just me, or does this place feel like something terrible happened here?”
David snorted. “Probably did. You don’t want to know.”
They made their way to the far wall. There was a subtle seam, barely visible under the dim ceiling lights. David inserted the key into a hidden slot below a fake vent. A mechanical click answered.
Now came the harder part.
The code.
David looked at the keypad mounted beside the hidden door and groaned. “What do you think they’d use? Some childhood date? Their mother’s death anniversary?”
Arthur crossed his arms. “Well, it won’t be birthdays. That’s too basic for people like them.”
“Still… they wouldn’t just slap in something like 1234—this is the key to everything. The archive. The whole operation.”
Arthur stared at the panel for a moment. Then he stepped forward and typed 1-2-3-4.
A beep.
Then another click.
The door slid open.
David stared at him. “Are you serious?”
Arthur shrugged. “Sometimes the dumbest code is the smartest. Who’d believe a criminal empire would use something that obvious?”
David huffed, clearly both annoyed and impressed. “Not bad, Sherlock.”
They entered the archive.
The room inside was long and narrow, floor to ceiling stacked with boxes, metal shelves, and leather-bound books. No windows. No cameras, at least not visible. It smelled like old paper and secrets.
They got to work.
Each shelf was a maze. Staff rosters. Financial reports. Distribution records. Expired IDs. Inventories. Some boxes had bloodstains. Others had wax seals.
Arthur pulled folders, opened them, skimmed. “This is more than just company history. This is evidence.”
David was doing the same. “Look for offshore transactions. Anything illegal. Weapons. Drugs. Blackmail. Follow the filth.”
They moved fast—quiet but desperate. Every minute they spent here was one minute closer to being caught.
Then Arthur froze.
“David,” he whispered, holding up a plain black leather book. No label. No markings. No dust.
David rushed over and snatched it from his hand, flipping pages rapidly.
“Massive weaponry sells,” he muttered, eyes flying down the columns. “God. Unlicensed. Off-grid. Whole shipments gone without record—except this.”
His fingers gripped the cover tighter. “This is it. It’s the big one.”
Arthur exhaled. “Finally.”
And then they heard it.
Click.
The door.
Footsteps. Calm. Whistling.
Arthur’s blood went cold.
He and David ducked behind one of the tall shelves, crouching low. The book fell from David’s hands onto the floor with a soft thud. Too loud in the silence.
The footsteps entered the room.
David slowly leaned to the side, peering through a gap.
“Shit,” he mouthed silently. Andrea.
Zade’s brother. Too casual to be a guard. Too calm to suspect anyone.
Andrea moved toward a box a few rows down. He hummed quietly as he opened it, sorting through files.
David tugged Arthur’s arm.
Arthur resisted. He mouthed, the book!
“I know!” David hissed under his breath. “We’ll come back for it. Not now. We get caught, we’re dead.”
Reluctantly, Arthur nodded.
They slipped backward, away from the shelves. Step by step, every movement calculated, limbs tense.
Andrea didn’t turn around.
Once they reached the door, David checked the hallway. Empty.
They bolted.
Out the corridor. Up the stairs. Down another hallway and through the service door.
Only once they were outside and running toward the trees did Arthur breathe again.
He glanced at his watch.
11:59 p.m.
They told Alex to keep Zade away until 12:20. That left them exactly 21 minutes to disappear from the estate’s radar.
“We need to grab that book later,” Arthur muttered, wiping sweat from his forehead.
David nodded, panting. “And maybe punch Andrea in the face for good measure.”
They didn’t stop running until the mansion was just a silhouette behind them—dark, still, and full of secrets.