Chapter 19 - The Successor’s Test
The masked Circle members sat without speaking.
Daniel stood beside Chair One while Adrian placed a silver case on the black table.
Inside rested the missing property deed, the stolen financial records, and a chef’s jacket sealed inside glass.
Daniel recognized it immediately.
“My first Bellarose uniform.”
Adrian smiled.
“Your inheritance.”
Victor remained near the gate, his weapon hidden beneath his coat.
Melissa sat rigidly in Chair Eight.
The masked figure in Chair Two spoke first.
“Daniel Cole, you were selected because you possess three necessary qualities.”
“Which ones?”
“Public trust. Financial control. Emotional attachment to the property.”
Daniel looked around the chamber.
“You framed me, destroyed my reputation, and kidnapped people to offer me a position?”
“It was a test.”
Adrian removed the jacket from the case.
One silver button reflected the overhead light.
Daniel remembered Eleanor sewing it back onto the fabric when he was seventeen.
Adrian handed him a small knife.
“Remove the seal.”
Daniel did not move.
“And if I refuse?”
Chair Six answered.
“Eleanor Hayes and Thomas Hayes will not survive the night.”
A screen activated above the table.
It showed Eleanor, Thomas, and Samuel leaving the Silent Room.
Daniel’s anger rose.
“You’ve been watching them the entire time.”
“We watch everyone.”
Adrian leaned closer.
“Take the button.”
Daniel accepted the knife.
Every masked face turned toward him.
He cut through the thread and lifted the silver button.
Nothing happened.
Adrian’s confident expression vanished.
He examined it.
“This is ordinary metal.”
Daniel almost smiled.
“You stole the wrong jacket.”
Suddenly, Victor drew his weapon and fired at the chamber lights.
Darkness swallowed the room.
Melissa overturned Chair Eight and struck the alarm panel.
Daniel grabbed the silver case while Victor shouted for him to run.
Masked figures moved through the darkness.
A gunshot echoed.
Then another.
Daniel reached the railway passage with Melissa behind him.
Victor remained inside the chamber, holding the gate open.
“Go!” he yelled.
Adrian’s voice roared from somewhere beyond the table.
“Seal every tunnel!”
Daniel and Melissa jumped into the service vehicle.
As it accelerated away, Daniel opened the silver case.
The deed remained inside.
So did Thomas’s journals and several encrypted drives.
But beneath them lay something Adrian had never intended him to see.
A photograph of the twelve Circle members without masks.
Daniel recognized politicians, judges, and executives.
Then he saw the person seated in Chair One.
It was Eleanor Hayes.
The photograph had been taken more than forty years earlier.
Daniel stared at it in disbelief.
Melissa looked over his shoulder.
“She was one of them?”
Daniel turned the photograph over.
A handwritten message appeared on the back.
May you like
Eleanor was not our enemy. She was our first leader.
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