Chapter 6 - The Dead Woman’s Secret
I stared at the imposing stone crypt surrounded by dead vines and wrought-iron fencing.
"If the lock requires Adrian's DNA, how are we supposed to get inside?" I asked Isabella.
She reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a small, insulated cooler bag.
She unzipped it, revealing a sterile glass vial filled with dark red liquid.
"I kept a lot of souvenirs before I had to fake my own death," Isabella said with a terrifyingly calm smile.
"This is Adrian's blood, drawn during a private medical exam ten years ago."
I shivered, realizing just how long this woman had been plotting her revenge.
We stepped out of the car into the freezing night air.
The cemetery was completely silent, isolated from the rest of the massive estate.
We approached the heavy bronze doors of the crypt.
A modern, high-tech biometric scanner was awkwardly embedded into the ancient stone wall.
Isabella carefully poured a few drops of the preserved blood onto a clear glass slide.
She inserted the slide into the optical reader of the scanner.
The machine hummed quietly, a green laser scanning the sample.
A heavy mechanical clunk echoed from deep within the doors.
The lock blinked green, and the heavy bronze doors slowly swung open.
The smell of stale air and dried roses wafted out of the darkness.
Isabella turned on a heavy-duty flashlight, illuminating the stone steps leading down into the vault.
"Stay close," she whispered, pulling a small handgun from her coat pocket.
We descended into the freezing underground chamber.
Stone sarcophagi lined the walls, holding generations of the Vale ancestors.
At the very back of the room stood a polished marble altar.
Isabella walked up to it and pressed her hand against a carved stone rose on the side.
A hidden drawer smoothly slid open.
Inside rested a thick, leather-bound notebook.
"The cartel ledger," Isabella said, her eyes gleaming with triumph.
She grabbed the book and handed it to me.
I opened it, quickly scanning the handwritten columns of numbers and offshore routing codes.
It was exactly what I needed to bury Adrian and his mother forever.
"We have it," I said, closing the book tightly.
"Let us get out of here before security patrols the grounds."
I turned to leave, but my flashlight beam caught something strange in the corner of the crypt.
It was a modern steel coffin, sitting completely apart from the historical stone graves.
There was no name engraved on it.
Curiosity overcame my fear, and I stepped closer to examine it.
The lid was not welded shut.
It was secured with simple mechanical latches.
"Clara, do not touch that," Isabella warned, her voice suddenly sharp.
I ignored her, unfastening the heavy steel latches and pushing the lid open.
I pointed my flashlight down into the coffin.
My breath hitched in my throat, and the heavy ledger nearly slipped from my hands.
Lying inside the coffin was a man perfectly preserved in a high-tech cooling gel.
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He had Adrian's face, Adrian's hair, and Adrian's exact bone structure.
But the man in the coffin was clearly dead, and he had been dead for years.
