Chapter 2 - The Weight of the Past
The silence in the ballroom stretched like a pulled wire, ready to snap under the immense pressure of hundred-watt stares and stunned disbelief. Bianca was still sprawled across the floor, gasping for air, her face flushed with humiliation and rage as her mother and two family attorneys rushed forward to help her up.
"Daniel! Do something!" Bianca screeched, pointing a trembling, manicured finger directly at Grace. "She attacked me! Have her arrested! Fire the entire hotel management right now!"
I didn't move. My boots felt glued to the marble floor. My mind raced backward through time, violently tearing open locked doors in my memory.
My father, Richard Witmore, had built Witmore Real Estate on a foundation of iron and blood that he carefully disguised beneath blueprints, charity galas, and corporate acquisitions. Before he died of a sudden, highly convenient heart attack two years ago, he had left me a legacy of immense wealth—and a series of cryptic, paranoid warnings. “Trust no one, Daniel,” he had rasped on his deathbed, clutching my hand with bone-crushing strength. “The sins of the past don’t stay buried. They wear uniforms. They wait.”
I had thought it was the rambling of a dying old man losing his grip on reality. Looking at Grace now, standing unfazed amidst a sea of panicked millionaires, I knew my father was right.
Security guards finally flooded the room, heavy-set men in black suits barking orders and converging on Grace from three sides. But Grace didn't flinch. Her eyes flicked from guard to guard, calculating escape routes, weak points, and center-mass targets with terrifying ease.
Before the lead guard could grab her shoulder, Grace raised her hands—not in surrender, but in a neutral, non-threatening block. "Step back," she said, her voice no longer the meek whisper of a timid employee, but a low, steel-edged command that carried absolute authority. "I don't want to hurt your people. Call off the guards, Mr. Witmore."
She looked directly at me. Not at Bianca, not at the lawyers, but straight into my eyes.
My breath hitched. "How do you know my name?" I demanded, stepping past the stunned crowd.
Grace’s expression softened just a fraction, a bittersweet shadow crossing her features before hardening back into professional armor. "I knew your father, Daniel. Long before he wore a three-piece suit on Fifth Avenue. Long before he built this empire on the graves of Unit Four."
The name Unit Four hit me like a physical blow.
The color drained entirely from my face. Unit Four was a ghost story within our family archives—a classified, off-the-books private security and intelligence black-ops division my father commanded in his early years before transitioning into commercial real estate. Every document regarding Unit Four had supposedly been destroyed in a warehouse fire the week my father died.
May you like
"Who are you?" I whispered, ignoring the furious protests of Bianca, who was now standing, brushing shattered glass and wine stains from her ruined dress.
"My name isn't Grace Álvarez," she replied calmly, as hotel security finally closed in, pinning her arms behind her back. Even as they restrained her, she didn't resist; she merely kept her eyes locked on mine. "My real name is operative Seven. And your father didn't die of a heart attack, Daniel. He was executed. Just like my commanding officer. And tonight, the people who ordered it know exactly where to find us."
