A D R I A N 

Reputation first. Always.
That is the Valcrosse reflex: contain the fire before it scorches the brand. But tonight there is no strategy brief, no press team fast enough to bury what happened in the wine room. My fingerprints are still on her skin. The island’s guests have proof on their phones. And the look in her eyes when I walked away burns worse than any headline could.

So I walk.

Past shuttered banquet halls, past the echo of applause that still rings from the gala below. The corridors are hushed now, washed in pale moonlight that filters through the glass walls like judgment. Each step keeps me moving, keeps me from picturing her against that shelf, hair wild, mouth trembling, the sound she made when she realized we were not alone.

Sleep would be mercy. I do not deserve mercy.

The security wing hums faintly with servers and recycled air. Outside, the lagoon glows its usual blue, a calm lie over dark water. I pause before the observation window, hands braced against the glass, and let the reflection split me in two: heir and man. The heir wins, as always.

Then something shifts.

A flicker at the far end of the corridor. Quick, deliberate, not the sway of palm shadows or the stutter of the fluorescents but movement.
I straighten. The security feed monitors behind me blink one after another, then glitch to static for a single breath.

“Ethan,” I say into my comm, voice low. “Are you still awake?”

“Always,” comes the reply, gravel and fatigue. “You are supposed to be off the floor.”

“There is someone in the east wing.”

“Maintenance?”

“Maintenance does not move like that.”

The figure slides through the glass cross-corridor again, black clothing, cap, no face. My pulse spikes. I move, keeping to the wall, footsteps silent on polished tile.

“Meet me on sublevel two,” I murmured.

“Copy.”

The air feels thicker down here, salted from the ocean vents. Emergency lights pulse every few meters, painting everything in red-white intervals like a heartbeat. I catch the shadow again ahead of me, taller this time, or maybe the reflection stretches them.

“Stop,” I call, voice sharp. The figure hesitates, half a turn, then bolts toward the stairwell.

I break into a run.

Ethan appears before I even hear his steps, broad shoulders cutting through the red pulse of the hallway lights. His hand is already on the grip of his sidearm, voice low.
“Visual?”

“Maintenance corridor, east wing, headed for service stairs.”

He glances once at the flickering security camera above us. “Feed’s been looped. Whoever that is, they’re inside the system.”

I hate how calm he sounds. It means he is already cataloguing failure. “Then we are blind.”

He nods once. “You take it up. I will cut them off below.”

We split without another word, years of drills condensing into instinct. The metal stairs vibrate under my boots, humidity beads along the rail, slick as sweat. Somewhere below, a door clangs open, then the hollow echo of running feet.

“South maintenance access,” Ethan’s voice crackles through comms. “They are fast.”

“So am I.”

I round the landing, nearly slipping on a patch of seawater tracked from the docks. The next corridor is narrow, concrete, pipes sweating, the smell of oil and salt thick in the air. The figure darts through the emergency glow at the far end, a black blur that moves like someone trained for silence.

“Stop!” My shout rebounds off metal and glass. The intruder does not.

I shove harder, closing the gap. Their shoulder brushes a hanging wire, sparks flaring bright for an instant, and for that flash I see a gloved hand, compact build, maybe five-seven, maybe female.

They twist toward the service hatch. I lunge, fingers grazing fabric, then nothing. The hatch slams behind them, locking with an electronic hiss.

Ethan’s voice cuts in. “North pier exit is sealed. They are boxed.”

“Not if they know the override.”

He curses softly in my ear. “You think it is inside help.”

“I know it.”

I scan the floor for anything, any trace, and find it: a metal ring glinting in the emergency light. Keys. Four silver tags stamped with departmental zones, security, storage, clinic, finance but one slot empty.

Ethan jogs up beside me, breath even. “That is the restricted master set.”

My stomach turns cold. “And the gold key?”

He shakes his head, jaw tight. “Gone.”

I stare at the empty slot until the hallway noise disappears. The gold-etched master key, the one that opens every suite, vault, archive, even the clinic’s restricted med bay.. is gone.

“They did not grab at random,” I say, voice low. “They knew exactly what to take.”

Ethan studies the keys under the emergency light, the metallic glint cutting across his face. “That set never leaves your office.”

“Except when I hand it to someone.” The words taste bitter. “Who logged access?”

He scrolls on his wrist tablet. The glow turns his eyes silver. “Three staff on the clearance list. Myself. Concierge Miguel. And the maintenance lead, Soren.”

“Soren has been with us for five years.”

“Still breathing somewhere. Do you want him brought in?”

“Not yet.” My pulse hammers too hard to think straight. If this is inside work, dragging anyone out too early spooks the rest. “Seal the vault wings. Disable remote overrides. Every door goes on manual until I say otherwise.”

Ethan radios the order, his tone sharp and efficient. Static replies filter back, confusion, movement, questions. He looks at me over the glow of the device. “Whoever this is, they move like training. Not panic. They knew camera timing, patrol intervals, sensor lag. That is not a thief, Adrian. That is one of ours.”

I press my fingers against my eyes, hard enough to see sparks. One of ours. The words scrape bone. I built this staff, every recruitment signed under my name. I taught them the code: precision, loyalty, perfection.

And someone just used it against me.

I pace, the sound of my shoes slicing the silence. Images collide: Elara’s face back in the cellar, the crowd, the judgment. Tonight’s scandal is already trending before dawn. Now this. Control slips twice in one night, and the island feels like it is testing me, stripping me of every illusion I have built.

Ethan breaks the silence. “If they get to the clinic wing, they can access patient records. Or the pharmacy storage.”

The thought slams through me. Elara’s name flashes in my mind, her signature on medical files, her living quarters not twenty meters from that storage.

“They will not touch her,” I say, sharper than I intend.

Ethan does not comment. He adjusts his radio and keeps scanning the dark corridor ahead. “Then we find them before they try.”

The emergency light above us flickers, dies, and reignites. In that breath of blackness, I swear I hear footsteps retreating deeper into the service tunnels.

We fan out toward the docks, radios crackling with partial reports, north perimeter clear, pier sensors offline, motion cameras looped back to the same two minutes of empty hallway. Whoever they are, they know how to vanish.

The night outside hits like cold salt. The boardwalk lamps sway in the wind, throwing fractured light across the water. It is close to two a.m., the hour when even the sea seems to hold its breath. Ethan moves ahead of me, scanning shadows between the cargo crates.

“East inlet,” he murmurs. “Engine noise. One of the staff boats just pulled off without clearance.”

I break into a run. By the time we hit the pier, only the echo remains, waves slapped aside by a small motorboat already lost to darkness. Lantern reflections stretch over the black water like a trail of ghosts.

“Call the coast watch,” I say. “No lights, low profile, heading toward the outer coves.”

Ethan speaks into his comm. “Copy. Tracker sweep initiated.”

The static that answers is heavy with failure.

He exhales slowly, scanning the horizon. “They are gone.”

The taste of metal floods my mouth. I look at the dock cameras overhead, each with a neat red dot, armed, but useless. “They knew the blind spots. All of them.”

Ethan does not argue. “That takes months of study. Maybe years.”

Which means this was not an outsider.
It was someone who belonged here.

Rain starts again, light and steady, like the island’s version of applause for a performance gone wrong. I tilt my head back, let it hit my face, and think of how easily control slips through fingers that once clenched the whole empire.

Ethan opens the utility box beside the pier gate. Inside, the key panel glows blue. Ten slots. Nine keys. One missing.

He does not speak at first. Just stare at the empty slot where gold should gleam. Then he closes the lid with a quiet finality that feels like a verdict.

“Master key is confirmed missing,” he says. “All-access. Suites, vaults, med bay. Every door.”

The wind picks up, carrying the sound of the sea colliding against the rocks below.

I meet his eyes, my voice even but cold enough to frost steel. “Then every door on Seraphine,” I say, “just became theirs.”

And somewhere out in that darkness, a single light blinks once, boat or beacon, I cannot tell. But whoever stole my island is watching.