station, expression unreadable.
As the elevator doors opened, Noah stepped inside.
Grant stepped in beside him. Pierce entered on the other side. Nolan and Caleb squeezed in behind them.
The doors began to close.
Victor’s face remained framed in the narrowing gap.
“Think carefully, Sergeant,” he said.
Noah held his gaze until the doors shut.
The elevator descended.
No one spoke for three floors.
Then Grant leaned close.
“You know how this ends?” he murmured. “Amelia wakes confused and medicated. My father moves her to a private facility. Doctors describe her as unstable. You spend years shouting at locked doors while everyone calls you bitter.”
Noah watched the numbers change.
Pierce smiled. “And if you touch one of us, we own you.”
The elevator opened onto the laundry level.
Heat rolled over them, thick with steam and detergent. Industrial machines rumbled behind walls. The corridor was narrow, windowless, and lined with carts stacked high with folded sheets.
Noah stepped out.
He listened.
Footsteps followed.
Grant. Pierce. Nolan. Caleb.
Not Victor. Not Simon.
That mattered.
Storage room C stood at the far end, half hidden behind a row of blue laundry bins. The door was closed. No light showed beneath it.
Noah knocked once.
Nothing.
He leaned close.
“Amelia sent the blue blanket.”
A faint scrape sounded inside.
Grant’s expression changed.
A lock clicked.
The woman who opened the door wore a housekeeping uniform with the name tag torn away. She was in her thirties, maybe younger, with a red mark along one cheek and a split in her lower lip that she kept pressing with her teeth. She clutched a clear plastic trash bag to her chest. Inside it, Noah saw fabric, paper, and something small wrapped in blue cloth.
When she saw the Harlan brothers, she recoiled.
“No,” she whispered. “No, you said he would come alone.”
Noah moved between her and Grant.
“You’re Mira?”
She nodded, eyes shining.
“What did you see?”
Grant’s voice cut through the corridor. “She saw nothing.”
Mira flinched, but her gaze stayed on Noah.
“I was working the east hall at Harlan House,” she said. “Mrs. Vale came down from the second floor carrying a small suitcase and a folder. She was crying, but she was walking. She kept one hand under her stomach. She said she needed a car.”
Noah felt the words land one by one.
“She was leaving?”
Mira nodded. “She told Mr. Harlan, ‘Noah needs to know before you destroy it.’ Then Mr. Harlan told Caleb to lock the east doors.”
Caleb’s face tightened.
Mira’s voice shook harder, but she kept going.
“Your wife said she had copies. She said her mother’s trust had never been empty. She said the baby changed everything because the inheritance would pass outside Victor’s control.”
Nolan stepped forward. “This is absurd.”
“She had the folder,” Mira said, louder now. “Grant tried to take it. She slapped him. Her ring cut his face.”
Grant lunged.
Noah reacted before thought. He caught Grant by the front of his jacket and drove him back into a laundry cart. Metal screamed against tile. Sheets spilled across the floor.
Pierce swung at Noah.
Noah ducked, turned, and pinned Pierce’s arm behind his back against the wall with enough force to make him stop breathing for a second.
“Try
