Chapter 8 - The Door Lock Flashes Red
The electronic door lock flashed red again.
One uncle stumbled toward it.
Conrad shouted his name, but the man ignored him.
He grabbed the handle and pulled.
Nothing.
He twisted harder.
Nothing.
His face twisted with panic.
“We’re locked in.”
Mara’s eyes moved slowly toward Conrad.
“That was the idea.”
The uncle spun toward him.
“You locked us in with her?”
Conrad’s face flushed.
“With her,” Mara repeated softly.
Her voice made the phrase poisonous.
The uncles looked at one another.
For the first time, they did not look like a unified council.
They looked like men wondering who would be blamed first.
Adrian stared at the red lock.
His face had gone gray.
“Mara, unlock the doors.”
She looked at him.
“I didn’t lock them.”
That answer terrified him.
Because if Mara had not locked them, then whatever page forty-seven activated had reached beyond her hands.
The laptop glowed on her lap.
The screens burned red.
The counsel stood beside the table with her black portfolio.
Rain smashed against the windows.
Conrad looked toward the ancestral portraits as if expecting dead men to grant authority back to him.
They did not.
The trustee at the door stepped away, breathing hard.
“What does red mean?”
No one answered.
The prompt would not reveal it.
No text on screens.
No symbol.
No explanation.
Only the color.
Mara placed both hands lightly over the forged folder.
Her faint split lip made her smile look more chilling.
Conrad whispered, “You don’t know what you’ve done.”
Mara held his gaze.
“No, Conrad. You don’t know what you signed before asking me to.”
The sentence snapped his head back.
He recognized the danger.
Not page forty-seven itself.
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The possibility that he had touched it first.
Read Chapter 9 👉 Because Mara revealed nothing, but Conrad began to fear that the trap had been hidden inside his own forged agreement.
