Chapter 7 - Eight Minutes of Darkness.
Ethan ran before anyone could stop him.
Emergency lights flickered on along the corridor, casting the staircase in dim red illumination.
“Sophie!”
Daniel followed two steps behind.
They reached the guest suite and found the door open.
The nurse stood in the hallway holding a flashlight.
“She was here ten seconds ago.”
Ethan entered the room.
The bed was empty.
His suit jacket lay on the carpet.
A small window beside the bathroom was open, but the exterior drop made escape impossible for a child.
Then Ethan heard crying from the connecting dressing room.
He pulled the door open.
Sophie was crouched behind a row of hanging coats.
He dropped to his knees.
“Hey, hey, I’m here.”
She launched herself into his arms.
“The lights went away.”
“I know.”
“Grandma said bad things happen when people tell secrets.”
Ethan went still.
“When did she say that?”
“Before your party.”
“It wasn’t my party.”
Sophie buried her face against him.
Ethan carried her downstairs.
The outage lasted eight minutes.
When full power returned, Arthur discovered that the estate office computer had been removed.
So had two archival boxes from the locked room.
Security footage showed no external intruder entering the property.
Someone inside the house had used the outage.
Margaret remained in the library with her attorney and Celia throughout the darkness.
Daniel had been with Ethan.
Elena had stayed beside Arthur.
That left more than twenty staff members, several relatives, and one missing chief of staff who might still have had remote access.
The security supervisor checked the electrical panel.
The outage had not been accidental.
A manual shutdown had been triggered from the maintenance corridor.
Ethan asked him to preserve logs and contact local authorities to document the missing property.
He avoided accusations.
Facts mattered now.
Sophie sat curled beside Elena on the library sofa eating toast and sliced bananas.
Ethan watched her take careful bites.
Every bite made his guilt sharper.
He sat across from Margaret.
“Who else knew about the files downstairs?”
“No idea.”
“Who knew the power controls?”
“This is a large estate.”
“Who knew I would be here tonight?”
Margaret’s mouth tightened.
Everyone had expected Ethan to arrive the following morning.
His flight from London had changed unexpectedly after a meeting ended early.
He had come directly from the airport.
His early arrival was the only reason he had walked through the utility corridor instead of entering the ballroom with the other guests.
That accident of timing had exposed everything.
Arthur opened a backup accounting portal on his tablet.
“The missing computer is inconvenient, not fatal.”
Margaret looked at him.
Arthur continued.
“Financial records are mirrored off-site.”
For the first time all night, Ethan saw genuine relief.
Then Arthur’s expression changed.
“What?” Ethan asked.
“There is a pending transfer.”
“How much?”
“Four hundred thousand dollars.”
“To M.C. Events?”
“No.”
Arthur turned the tablet around.
The recipient was a newly created custodial account bearing Sophie’s name.
The authorization request had been submitted twenty minutes before the power outage.
Ethan stared at the approval field.
It required his digital signature.
A signature had already been attached.
May you like
It looked perfect.
Except Ethan had never signed it.
