Chapter 2 - The Card at the Kitchen Door
By 10:00 p.m., the grand ballroom had been transformed into a high-security containment zone. Armed guards in dark suits stood at every exit, while thirty caterers and seventy wealthy guests sat in tense, frightened silence.
Inside the estate’s subterranean command center, I stood before a wall of thirty high-definition monitors alongside Arthur and Clara. We were reviewing the digital access logs for the service elevator and the private kitchen cold room.
“The cold room door requires a high-level keycard swipe,” Arthur explained, tapping the glowing keyboard. “Between 7:00 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.—the window when the cake was being prepared for presentation—only four card swipes were registered on that reader.”
The monitor displayed four names:
Marco Rossi – Head Executive Chef.
Clara Carter – Head Housekeeper.
Gabriel Sterling – My younger brother and vice-chairman of Sterling Global.
Veronica Sterling – My late father’s second wife, my stepmother.
Clara gasped, backing away from the console. “Mr. Julian... I swiped my card at 7:10 p.m. to retrieve extra linen napkins! Lily was playing with her doll near the laundry chute! I swear on my life I didn't see anyone near the cake!”
“I know you didn't, Clara,” I said gently. “If you or Lily were involved, Lily wouldn't have knocked the cake out of Ethan’s hand.”
I turned my sharp gaze toward the remaining three names on the list.
Chef Marco Rossi had been with our family for twelve years. He knew about Ethan’s fatal allergy better than anyone, preparing every meal with obsessive care.
Gabriel, my younger brother, stood to inherit thirty percent of the family trust if Ethan were to pass away without heirs. Gabriel had been deep in gambling debt three years ago before I quietly bailed him out and placed him on a strict corporate allowance.
And then there was Veronica—my sharp, calculating stepmother who had spent the last five years contesting my father’s will, demanding a larger share of the Sterling estate holdings.
“Bring Marco to the holding office first,” I ordered Arthur. “And pull the video footage from hallway C-4.”
Arthur clicked a file, but instead of clear video, the monitor screen burst into static noise.
“The feed was looped,” Arthur muttered, his face turning pale. “Someone used an internal system override code to freeze the camera loop for exactly twelve minutes between 7:15 p.m. and 7:27 p.m.”
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My jaw tightened. Overriding the security server required an administrative master password—a code known only to four people in the world.
Someone was not just trying to kill my son; they were using my own security infrastructure to cover their tracks.
