After examining the threatening photograph and discussing initial security measures with Eleanor, Lucien stood and moved to his personal safe—the smaller one he'd accessed earlier, not the wall safe that held the mysterious package.
"Before we go any further," he said quietly, "there's something else you should see. Something I should have shown you before but couldn't bring myself to."
Ava watched as he input a code and pulled open the safe door. Inside weren't files or evidence or weapons—just a small wooden box that looked old and handled with care.
"When you accessed my computer earlier," Lucien said, pulling out the box, "I wasn't angry. I was actually impressed by how quickly you figured out my passwords. Most people wouldn't have made those connections."
"You knew I would try," Ava said. "You left me a roadmap."
"I left you a possibility," he corrected. "I wasn't sure you'd actually take it. The fact that you did tells me you're ready for partnership rather than just protection." He set the box on his desk between them. "This is what was in this safe. What I was guarding so carefully."
He opened the box to reveal its contents: a small stack of photographs, some letters, and a folded piece of paper that looked yellowed with age. The photos showed a younger Lucien with his parents—family snapshots from before tragedy had torn their lives apart. His mother was beautiful, elegant, with warm eyes that Lucien had inherited but learned to harden. His father looked stern but not unkind, with the same sharp features Lucien now bore.
"These are the only photos I have of my family together," Lucien said quietly. "Everything else was lost in estate sales and the chaos after my father's death. I guard these because they're the only evidence I have that we were once whole."
Ava felt her throat tighten with emotion. She'd been so focused on his controlling behavior that she'd forgotten he was someone who'd lost both parents to violence connected to her father. These weren't strategic documents or evidence to be weaponized—they were personal treasures from a life that had been destroyed.
"I'm sorry," she said quietly. "For thinking the worst. For assuming you were hiding something malicious."
"You had every reason to think that." He picked up the folded paper, handling it with careful reverence. "But there was one other thing in here. Something I wasn't ready to share because I didn't understand what it meant."
He unfolded the paper, revealing neat handwriting that had faded slightly with time. "My father's suicide note. The original was kept by police as evidence, but I was given a copy after the case was closed. I've read it hundreds of times, trying to understand what he was thinking in those final moments."
Ava could see the pain in his eyes as he looked at the words his father had written before taking his own life. "You don't have to show me if it's too personal."
"I want you to see it. Because I think it might be relevant to what we're dealing with now." He held out the paper, and she took it carefully.
The note was brief, written in the controlled script of someone trying to maintain composure while making a final statement:
To whom it may concern,
I cannot carry the weight of what I've done any longer. My actions led to David Lane's death, whether directly or through my failure to protect him from forces I should have recognized and confronted. I tried to help, tried to extract him from a situation that had become untenable, but my interference only made things worse.
I've spent two years trying to make amends—supporting his family, investigating what really happened, trying to find evidence that might bring his killers to justice. But the truth is, I failed him. I failed his family. And I cannot live with that failure.
If anyone reads this and wonders whether David Lane was a good man who made mistakes or a criminal who deserved his fate, know this: he was caught in a situation not of his making, coerced by people more powerful and ruthless than either of us understood. He died trying to protect his family from consequences he never should have faced.
To Lucien, my son: I'm sorry to leave you with this burden. I'm sorry I couldn't be stronger, couldn't find a way through this that didn't involve running away. But I want you to know that some battles can't be won, no matter how much power or money you have. Some enemies are too deeply embedded, too well-protected, to defeat through conventional means.
Beware the Serpent. That's all I can tell you. All I dare commit to paper. But if you're reading this, if you're trying to understand what happened, remember: the serpent sheds its skin and emerges renewed, but the venom remains the same.
I love you. I'm sorry.
Richard Drake
Ava read the note twice, her hands trembling. The pain and guilt in every line were palpable, but it was the cryptic warning at the end that made her breath catch.
"Beware the Serpent," she read aloud. "What does that mean?"
"I've been trying to figure that out for years," Lucien admitted. "At first, I thought it was just his mind breaking under the strain—a poetic way of warning me about danger without being specific. But the more I've investigated, the more I think it was a deliberate clue. Something specific enough to be meaningful but vague enough not to endanger anyone who might read it."
"A code name," Ava suggested. "Or a symbol. Something that would mean something to you but not to anyone else."
"That's what I've always suspected. But I've never been able to connect it to anything concrete." He took the note back and refolded it carefully. "I've searched through my father's papers, his business records, even his personal journals. No mention of anyone called Serpent or any organization using that symbol."
Ava thought about the threatening packages, about the systematic elimination of anyone who got too close to the truth about the money laundering operation. "What if it's not a name but a description? The serpent sheds its skin—someone who constantly reinvents themselves, changes identities, appears in different forms?"
Lucien's eyes sharpened with interest. "Someone who operates through shell companies and proxies. Someone who's never directly connected to the crimes they order."
"Exactly. Your father said the serpent sheds its skin but the venom remains the same—the methods change but the fundamental nature doesn't. Someone who's been operating for decades, constantly adapting, but always achieving the same ends."
They stared at each other as the implications sank in. If Ava's theory was correct, they weren't just dealing with a criminal organization but with a specific individual who'd been orchestrating these operations for potentially decades. Someone who'd coerced her father, ordered his death, driven Lucien's father to suicide, and was now watching them with enough boldness to send threatening packages.
"We need to look at this differently," Ava said, her mind racing. "Not as separate incidents but as a pattern. What connects all the crimes? What's the common thread that runs through your father's investigation?"
"Money laundering," Lucien said immediately. "That was the core of what your father was forced to do—create systems to clean dirty money through Drake Industries' legitimate transactions."
"And those systems still exist," Ava realized. "The shell companies, the false invoices, the methods my father created—they didn't disappear when he died. Someone else must have taken over, must have continued using his techniques."
Lucien pulled out his phone and began typing rapidly. "If that's true, if the same money laundering operation is still running, there might be traces in current business filings. Companies that match the patterns your father established, using similar structures and methods."
"Can your investigators find that?"
"They can try. But it'll be dangerous—anyone who looks too closely at these financial patterns ends up having accidents." He met her eyes seriously. "This is what I was trying to protect you from. Once we start actively investigating, once we begin following these threads, we become visible to whoever sent that package."
"We're already visible," Ava pointed out. "The photograph proves that. So we have two choices: hide and hope they leave us alone, or investigate and at least understand what we're dealing with."
"Or there's a third option," Lucien said slowly, his expression shifting to something calculating. "We make ourselves such obvious targets that whoever's watching has to respond. Force them to make a move that might reveal something useful."
"You want to use us as bait," Ava said, understanding his implication.
"I want to turn the surveillance around. Make them wonder what we know, what we're planning. Create enough activity that they have to either back off or escalate—and when they escalate, we're ready."
It was dangerous, reckless, exactly the kind of plan that could get them both killed. But it was also proactive, taking control of a situation where they'd been reactive for too long.
"What would that look like?" Ava asked carefully.
"We announce a formal investigation into Drake Industries' financial history. Claim we're preparing a comprehensive audit of all transactions from the past twenty-five years for tax purposes and corporate governance. Make it very public, very official, very visible."
"And when whoever's watching realizes we're looking at the exact period when the money laundering was happening?"
"They either have to let us find evidence—which means they're no longer operational or don't care about exposure—or they have to stop us. And stopping us means revealing themselves in some way."
Ava considered the plan, weighing the risks against the potential for actually getting answers. "Eleanor needs to be involved. Whatever security we have now needs to be tripled if we're deliberately making ourselves targets."
"Agreed. And you need to understand that once we start this, we can't back down without looking suspicious. We'd have to follow through with the audit even if things get dangerous."
"How dangerous are we talking?"
Lucien's expression was grim. "The last three people who got close to this information are dead. So... very dangerous."
They sat in his office as evening shadows lengthened across Manhattan, discussing the logistics of deliberately painting targets on their backs. It should have felt insane, should have triggered every survival instinct Ava possessed. Instead, it felt strangely empowering—choosing to face danger rather than waiting for it to find them.
"There's one more thing," Lucien said as they were wrapping up their planning. "The Serpent reference—my father wrote that knowing someone might read it after his death. Which means he thought there was a chance it would be meaningful to the right person."
"Someone who knew the significance," Ava agreed. "Someone connected to the situation."
"Or someone who would be. Someone who would eventually need that warning." He looked at her intently. "I think he meant it for you."
"For me? He'd never met me."
"But he knew about you. Knew that David Lane had a daughter who would grow up without her father. And maybe he hoped that someday, someone would connect the dots and understand what he was trying to say."
The idea that Lucien's father had left a cryptic message specifically for her—for the daughter of the man whose death he blamed himself for—made Ava's throat tight with emotion. Two men, both destroyed by the same criminal operation, both trying to protect the people they loved in their final moments.
"Then we owe it to both of them to figure out what the Serpent means," Ava said quietly. "And to stop whoever it represents."
Lucien nodded, and for the first time since she'd known him, she saw something in his eyes that looked like hope. Hope that they might actually find answers, might actually achieve some kind of justice for their fathers.
Or hope that they might survive this partnership long enough to become something more than just two people bound together by tragedy.