Chapter 6 - The Key in the Clock
The nursery door creaked open.
The silhouette of Nathaniel Cross stood in the doorway, the light from the hallway behind him casting his shadow long and terrifying across the room. Behind him, two guards stood with their weapons drawn.
“Where is she?” Nathaniel asked, his voice dead.
The room was empty.
The white bed was neat, the toys were in their chest, but the window to the balcony was wide open, the sheer curtains fluttering in the cold night wind.
“She took the boy, boss,” one of the guards said, running to the window and looking down at the dark gardens below. “They couldn't have gone far. The gates are locked.”
“Find them,” Nathaniel commanded. “And bring me the book. If she resists, you know what to do.”
But Ruby and Ollie weren't in the gardens.
They were still in the room.
Ruby had remembered the journal’s entry: “I hid the second key in the clock.”
While the guards had been searching the west wing, Ruby had dragged the heavy grandfather clock in the nursery hallway away from the wall. Behind the brass pendulum, wrapped in a piece of oilcloth, she had found it—a heavy, cold iron key with an intricate, old-fashioned bow.
Now, she and Ollie were standing in the narrow, dusty passage behind the iron door.
She had unlocked the three deadbolts from the inside, pulling the door open just as Nathaniel had entered the nursery. They had slipped through the gap, and she had locked it behind them.
The passage was pitch black, smelling of damp earth and old concrete.
Ruby held a small penlight she had kept in her cleaning apron, its narrow beam cutting through the darkness. She held Ollie’s hand tightly. The boy was walking beside her, his grip on her fingers firm and reassuring. He didn't look afraid anymore; he looked determined.
“Ollie,” she whispered, her voice shaking. “Do you know where this leads?”
The boy pointed down the stairs.
The stone steps went deep into the foundations of the mansion, far below the marble floors and the luxury suites. As they descended, the air grew colder, and the sound of the wind outside was replaced by a low, rhythmic humming—the sound of heavy machinery.
They reached the bottom.
The passage opened into a vast, modern room that looked like a private laboratory or a high-tech archive. Rows of silver filing cabinets lined the walls, and in the center of the room sat a massive server rack, its blue lights blinking in the darkness.
On the main desk, surrounded by several computer monitors, sat a single, silver ring.
A silver ring with a crest—a wolf holding a key.
Ruby’s heart stopped. She remembered the entry in Eleanor’s journal: “He told me he saw the man with the silver ring.”
She walked over to the desk, her hand reaching out to touch the ring. It was cold, heavy, and bore the insignia of the Halloway Shipping Syndicate—the very organization that controlled the freight routes and the docks.
Beside the ring lay a stack of shipping manifests.
Ruby picked them up, her eyes scanning the columns of numbers. She didn't need a degree in finance to understand what she was looking at.
Human trafficking. Illegal weapons. Toxic waste disposal.
The Cross empire wasn't built on freight and real estate. It was built on the transport of death. And Nathaniel Cross wasn't just a corrupt billionaire; he was the primary facilitator for the largest criminal syndicate on the East Coast.
And Eleanor had found out.
“She wanted to stop it,” a voice spoke from the darkness of the stairs.
Ruby spun around, her flashlight beam hitting the face of the man who had just entered the room.
It wasn't Nathaniel.
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It was Victor, the head of security. He had a silver ring on his finger—the exact duplicate of the one on the desk.
And in his hand, he held a gun.
