Chapter 4 - The Key to Floor Zero.
The elevator dropped farther than the Aurelia's basement garage.
Rowan counted eleven seconds before it stopped.
When the doors opened, stale air rolled into the car.
A narrow corridor stretched beneath low amber lights.
The walls were lined with framed photographs of hotel employees rather than celebrities or wealthy guests.
Evan found his father in the final frame.
Thomas Wright stood beside Elise Blackwood at a charity opening in 2001.
Both were smiling at someone beyond the camera.
“My father said Elise discovered money was disappearing from the employee pension fund,” Evan said.
Rowan touched her mother's face through the glass.
“I was told she abandoned me.”
“My father said she was trying to protect a child.”
A steel door waited at the end of the corridor.
The brass key opened it.
Inside was a windowless control room covered in dust.
Old monitors filled one wall.
Metal cabinets carried labels for every year since the hotel opened.
Rowan found the cabinet marked 2001.
It was empty.
Evan powered the backup server.
One monitor flashed to life, showing the service corridor from earlier that night.
Rowan appeared on-screen, running from two men in black coats.
One caught her near the laundry doors.
The other struck her in the ribs and demanded the founder's key.
Evan copied the recording to an encrypted drive.
Then he paused the image on the second man's face.
“That's Daniel Cross, Vivian's head of executive security.”
Rowan studied the first man.
“And that is the detective who took the report when my apartment was broken into.”
Footsteps sounded in the corridor.
Evan killed the monitor.
The steel door began closing automatically.
Rowan searched the room for another exit.
Behind a filing cabinet, she found a narrow maintenance hatch.
They crawled through as the steel door locked.
Voices entered the control room behind them.
Marcus spoke first.
“Find the drive and destroy everything else.”
Vivian answered from the corridor.
“The girl is more dangerous than Elise ever was.”
Rowan stopped inside the dark shaft.
Evan covered her mouth before she could speak.
Vivian continued.
“If Rowan reaches Room 1701, the board will learn why Conrad changed the trust.”
Marcus lowered his voice.
“And if Elise is still alive?”
The silence that followed felt like a confession.
“Then finish what you failed to do twenty-four years ago,” Vivian said.
Metal scraped behind Rowan.
Daniel Cross had opened the maintenance hatch.
Evan shoved Rowan forward.
They crawled until the shaft split in two.
“Go left,” Evan whispered.
“What about you?”
“I will send them right.”
Rowan refused to move.
Evan pushed the encrypted drive into her hand.
“My father lost his life protecting your mother.”
“I am not losing mine by watching you get caught.”
He kicked the right branch loudly, then climbed toward the left.
Daniel followed the false sound.
Rowan and Evan emerged behind a linen cart in the subbasement.
They reached the stairwell just as smoke began pouring from Floor Zero.
Vivian was burning the archives.
On the encrypted drive, a second file activated automatically.
Its title was simple.
ROWAN'S BIRTH.
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THE WOMAN BENEATH THE CHANDELIERS
