CHAPTER 6 — THE TRAITOR AT JOSIAH'S TABLE
CHAPTER 6 — THE TRAITOR AT JOSIAH'S TABLE
Inside the panic room, Victor finally arrived.
His suit was torn.
Blood stained one sleeve.
"We've secured the lower floor."
Josiah looked relieved.
"How many men?"
Victor hesitated.
"We've lost eleven."
Silence.
Eleven loyal guards.
Dead within twenty minutes.
Only an insider could have caused such devastation.
Then Mia spoke.
"He's lying."
Both men looked at her.
Victor forced a smile.
"What do you mean, sweetheart?"
"You smell like the garage."
The room became still.
"I wasn't near the garage."
"Yes, you were."
She tilted her head innocently.
"You have the same oil smell as the man who hugged Uncle Owen."
Josiah's expression changed instantly.
"What did you say?"
Mia pointed at Victor.
"I saw him."
"Yesterday."
"He thought I was asleep."
"He opened the garage door for Uncle Owen."
Victor slowly stepped backward.
His hand drifted toward his jacket.
Josiah drew his pistol first.
"Don't."
Victor sighed.
Then...
he laughed.
"You always underestimated her."
Without warning, he pulled a flash grenade from his pocket.
The explosion filled the panic room with blinding white light.
Victor dove through the emergency exit.
Josiah fired twice.
One bullet struck Victor's shoulder.
The other missed.
By the time the smoke cleared...
the traitor was gone.
Outside, Willow found herself surrounded.
Six armed men blocked every path.
Their leader stepped forward.
He smiled politely.
"You must be the waitress."
"I've been called worse."
He chuckled.
"Our boss is impressed."
"I'm not."
"He'd like the key."
"I don't have it."
"I know."
His smile widened.
"But the little girl does."
Willow understood immediately.
This attack had never been about Josiah's empire.
It had always been about Mia.
And the blue key.
Back inside the mansion, Josiah searched Victor's abandoned radio.
One encrypted message remained unsent.
Coordinates.
A warehouse at the old harbor.
And one chilling sentence:
THE LEDGER IS INSIDE THE VAULT. THE KEY OPENS EVERYTHING.
Josiah felt his blood run cold.
The blue key wasn't opening a room.
It opened a safe.
A safe containing a ledger.
Olivia hadn't hidden money.
She had hidden evidence.
Evidence powerful enough to make someone fake deaths, infiltrate his organization, murder loyal investigators, and launch an all-out assault on the Mercer Estate.
Someone had spent eight years hunting a single key.
At that exact moment, miles away in an abandoned dockside warehouse, Owen Brooks stood before a gray-haired man whose face remained hidden in the shadows.
"The attack failed."
The old man calmly poured himself a glass of whiskey.
"Did the child find the key?"
"Yes."
"And Mercer?"
"Still alive."
The old man smiled faintly.
"No matter."
"They'll come to the harbor now."
Owen frowned.
"How can you be sure?"
"Because Josiah loved Olivia."
"And once he learns what she protected..."
"...he'll walk straight into the trap she died trying to keep him away from."
The old man finally stepped into the light.
Owen lowered his head respectfully.
Not because he feared him.
Because every powerful criminal in the city answered to him.
Even Josiah had never known the truth.
The man who had ordered Olivia's murder...
The man who had spent years destroying the Mercer family from within...
The man behind every betrayal...
...was Josiah's own uncle.
Gabriel Mercer.
To the outside world, Gabriel had died fifteen years earlier in a yacht explosion.
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But dead men did not build criminal empires from the shadows.
And they certainly did not smile as they prepared to destroy the last surviving members of their own family.
