Elara acted quickly. Her survival instincts, honed from years of descending into unstable ruins, kicked in. The floor beneath her groaned, sounding like a monstrous, dying breath. She grabbed the heavy velvet stage curtain, tying a quick knot around a brass railing before launching herself into the dark pit where Darian Thorne had disappeared.
The drop was just ten feet, but the impact jarred her teeth. She landed on a slope of packed earth and broken stone. The earthy smell was overpowering now. The low, mechanical hum was loud and echoed through the soil. She scrambled to her feet and shone her phone's weak flashlight around. She found herself in a narrow, hand-dug tunnel—a forgotten sub-level beneath the original 19th-century foundations. Darian was nowhere in sight.
"Thorne! Where are you?" She hissed, her voice sounding frantic even to herself.
A calm voice, dangerously close, came from the gloom behind her. "An architectural enthusiast who carries a flashlight like a police baton. Intriguing."
Elara turned around, almost dropping her phone. Darian Thorne was leaning against a damp stone archway. His expensive suit was dusty, and his face looked grim. He held the crumpled yellow note she had seen him read.
"The building is collapsing. The Grand Ballroom floor is a stress plate. Why did you come down here? And what was on that note?" Elara demanded, her voice tight with fear and adrenaline.
He didn't answer right away. He looked her over, taking in her smudged face, her hastily gathered tools, and the raw fury in her eyes. "The floor is rigged to collapse, yes. But it's not rigged to kill. It's rigged to conceal. And I didn't pull the trigger." He extended the note. "This is why I came down here. It's a coded message, delivered anonymously to my P.O. Box five hours ago. The note simply read: 'The keystone holds the key to the manor's dead weight.'"
Elara frowned. "That doesn't make any sense. What does The Harrington have to do with a manor?"
"Everything," he said, the single word heavy with secrets. "The Harrington was built by my great-great-grandfather, Caspian Thorne. His final project, before he was forced out of the city, was a private estate—a monumental, baroque disaster called Thorne Manor. It's the same manor I own now, the same one that has been sealed and untouched for eighty years, and the same one I planned to demolish next month."
Elara's mind raced. "So, you're saying your plan to destroy this historical landmark was interrupted by a cryptic message about another historical property you own, which you also plan to destroy?"
"An unwelcome irony," he admitted. "But the message points to a secret hiding place—a crypt beneath this building, meant to store a ledger—a family secret my father thought was safely buried. If someone is alerting me, it means they know and are trying to access it. And that someone clearly knew I planned to demolish The Harrington first."
He looked directly at her, his eyes piercing the darkness. "You, Ms. Vance, know this building well. You found a symbol I've never seen before, and you clearly have a talent for spotting structural tricks. I believe your skills can keep the truth—whatever it is—from falling into the wrong hands."
Elara let out a short, harsh laugh. "You want to hire the restorer whose life's mission you nearly crushed an hour ago? I wouldn't work for Thorne Industries even if it was the last paycheck on earth."
"I'm not offering you a paycheck," Darian said smoothly, pushing off the wall. "I am offering you redemption for The Harrington. I will sign a binding agreement, drafted by my entire legal team, that I will not touch the keystone, nor will I demolish the building, for at least one year. You get the time you need for the zoning appeal, and you get to walk away with a guaranteed victory."
Elara's breath caught in her throat. A year. That was everything. It was the time she needed to secure funding and legal maneuvering to save The Harrington permanently. It was the only thing Darian Thorne could offer that she couldn't refuse.
"And the catch?" she asked, already sensing there would be one—a massive, sharp hook hidden in the velvet glove.
"The catch is Thorne Manor. It's a four-hundred-acre estate in upstate New York, built on a cliff overlooking the Hudson. It's beautiful, cursed, and falling apart. No one has been inside in eighty years. You will be my on-site architectural historian and restorer. You will work exclusively for me, in total secrecy, until we find this 'dead weight'—the ledger—and secure whatever dangerous family history is hidden inside. You will stay on the grounds and answer only to me. If you refuse, the wrecking ball outside starts swinging in thirty minutes."
He didn't need to say anything more. He held the future of The Harrington in his hands, and she felt trapped. Elara looked at the keystone far above her, then back at Darian Thorne. He wasn't just offering a job; he was proposing a deal with the devil.
"Fine," she spat out the word. "I'll do it. But I don't work for you; I work against your history. If you try to deceive me or if I find any threat to this building, I will expose everything."
Darian nodded, his fleeting relief evident. "A fair agreement, Ms. Vance. Now, we need to leave. There's nothing in this crypt but an empty safe. The ledger is gone. Someone beat us to it and left the note to trap me. They want me gone from the city."
He led her through a maze of forgotten stone passages, finally emerging in the alley behind The Harrington, where a black, armored SUV with tinted windows idled. Before she could protest, he ushered her inside.
As the car sped through the pre-dawn streets, Darian pulled out his phone, his face set in concentration. He called his head of security, issuing commands quickly. "Retrieve all the files on Thorne Manor. All of them. And find out which architect worked on the original Harrington blueprints—the one who vanished shortly after its completion. I want to know everything about Caspian Thorne's contemporaries."
He hung up and turned to Elara, the dim interior light revealing a new layer of weariness in his eyes. "The manor is where we start. You should know one thing, Ms. Vance. This isn't just about a ledger. It's about a death."
"Whose death?" Elara asked, dread pooling in her stomach.
He leaned forward, his voice barely a whisper. "The architect who designed the central vault of Thorne Manor, the man blamed for the structural collapse of the West Wing eighty years ago, a collapse that killed my mother. My father has always insisted it was an accident. But the last piece of evidence related to that architect was supposedly stored where we just were."
He settled back, looking out at the fading skyline of New York. "Someone is trying to tell me my mother's death wasn't an accident, and they've used the ghost of The Harrington to get my attention. The architect who disappeared, who knew the house better than anyone, was a woman named Isolde."
Elara looked at her hand, where a tiny, faded silver locket she always wore had slipped out from beneath her shirt. Engraved on the back, in script so fine it was almost invisible, was a single, unfamiliar initial: I.