The acceptance email from L'Atelier Gallery arrived at 9 AM the next morning. Madame Fleur's tone was brusque, welcoming Sydney to the team and listing her start date for the following Monday. The key line, for Sydney, was: "You will be granted Level 2 clearance for our archival database and physical records room, under supervision."
It was a foot in the door. A sanctioned reason to dig.
Armed with a new sense of purpose that was 70% terror and 30% grim determination, Sydney dressed in practical trousers and a blouse, shouldered her bag, and left the penthouse. Damien was already gone, the space holding only his silent, imposing absence.
Her first stop was not the gallery, but the City Public Archives, a grand, dusty temple of bureaucracy housed in a neoclassical building with echoing marble halls. She used her father's name like a key, requesting access to the historical filings for the Gabriel Reed Foundation for the Arts.
The files, when they were brought to her in a dusty cardboard box in a silent research room, were mundane on the surface: grant applications, donor lists, board meeting minutes, tax records. She started cross-referencing. Her father had been generous, almost to a fault. Large sums were disbursed to small community arts centers, restoration projects for historic theaters, scholarships for promising students.
But as she tracked the flow of money over a decade, a subtle pattern emerged, like a faint watermark held to the light. Every year, like clockwork, a substantial grant—always hovering just below a threshold that would trigger more detailed audit trails—was awarded to a small entity called The Ariadne Conservancy. The stated purpose was always vague: "Cultural Preservation Initiatives" or "Archeological Stewardship."
Sydney had never heard of it. A quick search on her phone yielded nothing but a dormant website with a P.O. box in Geneva and no listed directors. The money, according to the foundation's records, was wire-transferred to a bank in Luxembourg.
It was a ghost. A beautiful, philanthropic ghost that siphoned a consistent stream of her father's charity funds into the shadows of European banking.
Her heart beat a frantic rhythm against her ribs. This was a discrepancy. This was a clue. She took surreptitious photos of every mention of Ariadne with her phone, the click of the camera shutter sounding explosively loud in the quiet room.
---
From the archives, she went to the main branch of the city museum, where she used her new internship credentials to access their proprietary library network. She wasn't looking for art history now. She was searching for context.
She pulled up old newspaper databases, limiting her search to 2008 and the keywords Jordan, Al Jafr, business, expedition. The results were sparse. A few articles about regional unrest. A travel piece on desert archaeology. Then, buried in the business section of an international finance paper from late 2008, she found it: a three-paragraph blurb.
"Following the dissolution of the private security firm Sentinel Group, several of its former principals are reported to be pursuing independent ventures in asset procurement and logistics. Sentinel, which held contracts in the Levant region, ceased operations after an incident near Al Jafr, Jordan, that resulted in the loss of two contractors. Names have not been released."
Sentinel Group. Private security. An incident. Two contractors lost.
The date aligned. The location was exact.
Her father had never been in the military. He'd been a businessman. But a private security firm? "Asset procurement and logistics"? It sounded sanitized. Deadly. Was this the "harder world" Agnes had alluded to?
She took a picture of the article, her hands now steady with a cold, focused energy. The desert photograph wasn't a souvenir of a boy's adventure. It was a relic from a dangerous, buried past.
---
Priscille's apartment was a chaotic, cozy cave in a converted warehouse, dominated by an immense setup of computer monitors that glowed like a command center. The air smelled of spicy noodles and soldering iron.
"Okay, brace yourself," Priscille said, spinning in her chair, her eyes bright with the thrill of the hunt. She gestured to a monitor where the desert photo was displayed, the faces of the two unknown men circled in red. "Your mystery boys."
She brought up two dossiers, compiled from a patchwork of deep-web searches, encrypted forum mentions, and military records that should not have been accessible.
"Blondie is—or was—Marcus Thorne. Ex-Special Forces, UK. Dishonorably discharged in 2006 for 'conduct unbecoming,' which is usually code for something violent and off-the-books. He popped up as a hired gun for a few sketchy mining operations in Africa, then went quiet circa 2010. Presumed working black-ops or, more likely, dead."
Sydney stared at the man's laughing face in the photo. He didn't look dead. He looked alive with brutal charm.
"The quiet, broody one is more interesting," Priscille continued, pulling up another file. "Rafael Vane. American. Linguistics expert. Worked for a State Department contractor. His record is cleaner, but it's also… blanker. Big chunks of time unaccounted for. He left government work in 2009 and fell off the map. There are whispers, and I mean deep, dark-web whispers, that he became a facilitator. A guy who brokers things. Not commodities. Information. Access."
"A fixer," Sydney whispered.
"The fixiest." Priscille leaned forward. "Now, the kicker. I did a cross-reference. Both Thorne and Vane were listed as contractors for the Sentinel Group in the early 2000s."
The article. The blurb. It connected. Her father and Damien, smiling with two men who were professional soldiers and shadowy operatives, all linked to a defunct private military company that had suffered a fatal "incident" in the exact spot where the photo was taken.
"What happened in Al Jafr?" Sydney asked, her voice hollow.
"That, my friend, is buried under enough national security and corporate NDAs to sink a battleship. Whatever it was, it got two men killed and made Sentinel Group disappear." Priscille's expression turned grim. "And your dad and Damien were there. Right in the middle of it."
Sydney thought of the locked west wing. The 8 PM rule. Damien's contained power, his unnerving stillness, the way Albert moved like a soldier. Damien hadn't just been her father's friend. He'd been his colleague. In a world of guns, secrets, and death.
"The Ariadne Conservancy," Sydney said, showing Priscille the photos from the foundation files. "It's a ghost. My dad was funneling money to it for years."
Priscille's fingers flew over the keyboard. "Let's see if our ghosts know each other." She ran searches, her brow furrowed. "The Luxembourg bank is a dead end. Shell within a shell. But… the timing of the first payment. It's late 2008. Right after the Sentinel Group incident."
A cold, dreadful understanding began to crystallize. "It's not a charity," Sydney said. "It's a pipeline. For what? Hush money? Payments to families?"
"Or payments to keep other people quiet," Priscille suggested quietly. "You said Damien told someone your dad's 'situation' was 'contained.' What if Ariadne was part of the containment? What if your dad was paying for something—or to someone—for all those years, and Damien is now… managing the fallout?"
The pieces were there, jagged and sharp, refusing to form a complete picture but outlining something monstrous. Her father's philanthropy had a dark, secret twin. His best friend was a man who spoke of her as a secured variable. And she was living in his house, digging into a past that had already claimed lives.
Sydney left Priscille's apartment as night fell, the city lights feeling less like glitter and more like a million watching eyes. She didn't go straight back to the penthouse. She walked, the cool air clearing her head.
She was no longer just grieving. She was investigating. The gallery internship was no longer just a job; it was a source of access. Damien was no longer just a stern guardian; he was the prime subject of her inquiry.
As she approached the sleek tower of The Gilded Cage, she looked up at the dark windows of the penthouse. Somewhere up there, behind a locked door, was a man with all the answers. A man who thought the situation was contained.
She slipped her keycard into the reader. The elevator doors opened with a soft sigh.
Contained, she thought, stepping inside. We'll see about that.
The ascent began, smooth and silent, carrying her back up into the heart of the mystery.