Chapter 2 - Echoes in the Rigging"Clear the floor," Adrian ordered, turning away from Charles. "Marco, lock down the administrative wing. Nobody leaves this building until I have the internal server logs from the maintenance office."
"Boss, the reporters are starting to bypass the outer barricades," Marco warned, tapping his earpiece. "If we don't move you out through the loading dock soon, we're going to have cameras in our faces."
"Let them try," Adrian said. Then he looked at Clara. "You're coming with us."
"I'm a banquet waitress, Mr. Moretti. My shift ended the moment that chandelier hit the floor," Clara said, crossing her arms.
"Your shift ended when someone tried to frame you for a federal-level hit," Adrian countered, his tone brook-no-argument. "Unless you want to walk out those front doors into a media circus waiting to tear you apart as an assassin, you're staying under my protection."
Clara hesitated. She knew he was right. If Charles Whitaker's PR team had already leaked her name to the press, her life as she knew it was already over. She needed to prove her innocence, and the only person with the power, resources, and motive to dig into the Marlowe's dark underbelly was the man whose life she had just saved.
"Fine," Clara muttered. "Lead the way."
They descended through the labyrinthine backstage corridors of the opera house, passing old dressing rooms, dusty prop storage, and heavy velvet curtains that smelled of age and greasepaint. They reached the master rigging control room behind the fly gallery—a cramped, iron-railed platform suspended twenty feet above the stage floor.
Marco clicked on a tactical flashlight, sweeping it across the metal control panels.
"Look here," Clara said, stepping past the security chief and kneeling beside the main winch drum.
She pointed a finger at a small scratch on the housing of the manual brake.
"What am I looking at?" Adrian asked, kneeling beside her. The scent of expensive cologne mixed with the metallic tang of machinery.
"A bypass pin," Clara said softly, her fingers tracing the tiny groove in the steel. "The automatic safety lock on this winch was jammed with a custom-milled aluminum shim. Whoever dropped the chandelier didn't just cut the cable from the catwalks—they disabled the dead-man switch right here in the control room, where only senior staff have clearance."
Marco frowned, running a gloved finger over the shim. "This isn't standard maintenance gear. This is machine-tooled."
"It's the exact same tool my father used to service the counterweight systems back in 2012," Clara whispered, a cold realization dawning in her chest.
Adrian looked at her sharply. "Your father worked on this specific rig?"
"For fifteen years," Clara said, standing up slowly as the shadows of the catwalk loomed above them. "And three years ago, when the Marlowe underwent its multi-million-dollar renovation, he was pushed out. They said his safety standards were outdated. But before he left, he told me something was wrong with the building's financial ledger—that the Marlowe was being used as a front to wash money for Chicago's real estate syndicates."
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Adrian’s expression went very still. "The Marlowe Foundation is backed by the city’s development board. I hold a twenty percent stake in the trust."
"Which means whoever is laundering money through this theater needed you out of the way to push through the new zoning permits," Clara said, her eyes locking onto his. "And my father's old files... they might still be hidden in the building's historical archive."
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