Chapter 3 - The Traitor's Monologue
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Hannah’s head throbbed with a blinding, sickening pain. She blinked her eyes open, her vision blurry and obscured by the darkness. The air smelled of salt, rust, and damp concrete.
Her hands were bound tightly behind her back with coarse zip-ties, the plastic biting sharply into her wrists. She was sitting on the freezing floor of a cavernous, echoing warehouse.
Standing a few feet away, illuminated by the harsh glare of a single utility lantern, was Gregory Vance.
“You’re awake,” Gregory said casually. He was holding a sleek, suppressed pistol in his right hand.
“Mr. Vance,” Hannah gasped, struggling to push herself up against a wooden crate. “Why are you doing this? I didn't steal anything.”
“I know you didn't, Hannah,” Gregory sighed, running a hand over his thinning silver hair. “You’re just a maid. You don't even know what a ledger is. But that is exactly what makes you so useful.”
He walked toward a metal table where the missing leather-bound Delacroix ledgers sat in a neat stack.
“Victor is a dinosaur,” Gregory explained, his voice echoing in the empty space. “He refuses to adapt. He holds onto his power out of some misguided sense of honor. The Romanov syndicate offered me five million dollars for these books. Five million, Hannah. I couldn't pass that up.”
“Then take them and run!” Hannah cried, tears finally breaking through her composure. “Why take me? Why frame me? My daughter is at the house! She needs me!”
“Because Victor is relentless,” Gregory stated coldly. “If the ledgers just vanished, he would tear his own organization apart until he found the rat. He would eventually look at my accounts. But if the desperate, poor maid steals them, tries to sell them, and then tragically ends her own life out of guilt...”
Gregory smiled, a chilling, soulless expression. He pulled a printed document from his jacket.
“He finds your body. He finds this fake suicide note. He closes the case. And I ride off into the sunset a very wealthy man.”
Hannah’s blood ran entirely cold. He was going to murder her. She thought of Poppy’s sweet face, her little yellow duck pajamas. She couldn't die here.
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“He won't believe it,” Hannah said, her voice shaking but defiant. “Victor isn't stupid.”
“Victor is blinded by his own arrogance,” Gregory scoffed, raising the pistol and pointing it directly at her chest. “Now, sit still. I promise I’ll make it quick.”
