The roar of the motorcycle faded into the city's cacophony, but the silence it left behind at the construction site was deafening. Alicia stood frozen, clutching her father's blueprints against her chest as if they were a shield. The coordinates on the paper felt like they were burning through her skin.
"Arthur, he took a photo. They know we found it," Alicia whispered, her eyes searching the busy street beyond the gates.
Arthur's face had shifted. The relaxed, loving man from moments ago had been replaced by the calculating strategist who had survived a decade in the corporate trenches. He stepped closer, shielding her body with his own. "Silas, lock the gates. No one enters or leaves this site until my private security team arrives. And get those blueprints inside my car. Now."
They retreated to the safety of the Rolls-Royce, the tinted windows offering a fragile sense of security. Arthur took the weathered tube from Alicia's trembling hands, his eyes narrowing as he studied her father's seal.
"The Carters aren't the only ones watching," Arthur repeated the words from the note. "My father was obsessed with power, Alicia, but he wasn't a visionary. He was a thief. If your parents were hiding coordinates, it means they had something that couldn't be bought or stolen through a simple merger."
"But what could be so important that they'd be killed for it?" Alicia asked, her voice cracking. "They were architects, Arthur. They built schools, libraries... they weren't spies."
"Maybe they built something they weren't supposed to," Arthur murmured. He pulled out his laptop, his fingers flying across the keys as he entered the coordinates into a high-resolution satellite mapping program.
The screen flickered, loading a topography of the northern mountains, a region known for its dense forests and abandoned mines. As the map zoomed in, a small, unmarked structure appeared—hidden deep within a ravine, completely invisible from the main roads.
"It's registered to a shell company called 'Everglow Holdings'," Arthur noted, his brow furrowing. "Alicia... this company was founded by your father and my mother, Eleanor, twenty years ago."
Alicia gasped. "Your mother? But she never said anything! She treated me like a stranger at dinner."
"Or she was protecting you," Arthur said, a sudden realization dawning on him. "My mother has always been the quiet one, the one who stayed in the background while Henry ran the show. But maybe she was the one holding the real keys all along."
Suddenly, the car's proximity alarm began to wail. A black sedan had pulled up directly behind them, and three men in suits—not the police, and certainly not Arthur's security—were stepping out.
"Don't open the door," Arthur commanded, reaching for the gear shift. "We're leaving. Now."
As Arthur slammed the car into reverse, one of the men held up a badge. It wasn't federal. It was a private insignia Alicia recognized from the old files in the archives—the logo of the "Onyx Group," a global conglomerate that made Carter Corp look like a small family business.
The mystery was no longer a family feud. It was a global hunt.