Chapter 189- Dark Doors
I watched Hardin turn the USB drive over in his hand as though it might give up its secrets by touch alone.
"Are you going to play it?" I asked, keeping my voice even.
Hardin glanced at me, jaw set. "Not here. If she knows about the docks…she might have ears in this building."
I nodded, understanding. We left the office quickly, making up some excuse to the assistant who still looked pale from Elena's visit. It was what made him brilliant—but also what made him dangerous when cornered.
We didn’t go home. Instead, he took me to a private condo in the upper east side. A safe haven.
Inside, the space was minimal and sterile, like a hotel suite waiting for its first guest.
He inserted the USB drive.
It whirred. Loaded. A single folder appeared on the desktop: "Project—Seraphim."
Hardin double-clicked it.
Nothing.
The folder was empty.
For a moment, neither of us spoke.
He tried again, refreshing the screen, checking for hidden files, even pulling up command lines I didn’t recognize. Still, nothing.
"It has to be a trick," I said, peering over his shoulder. "Maybe the data is encrypted? Hidden?"
Hardin was already three steps ahead, launching decryption software, scanning for partitions, scanning the metadata. His brows furrowed.
"No," he muttered. "There’s nothing here. It’s not just encrypted. It’s literally empty. Like it was wiped. Recently."
"So, what—she hands you a blank flash drive, drops a cryptic warning, and leaves? Why go to all the trouble?"
He leaned back in the chair, the glow of the screen casting shadows under his eyes. "Because it was never about what was on the drive. It was about making me question everything."
I sat across from him, the hollow pit in my stomach growing. "You think she wanted you to spiral."
"I think she wanted me to go looking."
He turned the drive over again, then plugged it back in as though something might have changed. Still empty.
"What if she wants you to dig too deep? What if this is some kind of... breadcrumb trap?"
He didn't answer. He was already staring off into the middle distance, piecing together something invisible.
I reached out and touched his hand. "Hardin. Talk to me."
“I don't know what to say, I don't know what she's looking for? Even if she is trying to expose something I don't know what it is," he said with a sigh.
"But even if that is the case, why come to you now?"
Hardin stood and began to pace. "Maybe she’s not trying exposing anything. Maybe she’s cleaning up mess. Covering tracks. That would explain the empty drive. Maybe she erased it after showing it to someone else—or maybe it was never meant to contain anything. Just a message."
"A psychological move."
He stopped pacing. "Exactly."
We sat in silence again, but now the air felt charged.
Hardin opened his phone and started typing, calling in a contact from cyber security.
"If there’s anything that was ever on that drive," he said to me, "we'll find it."
But three hours later, when the contact arrived with a portable scanner and forensic tools, the answer was the same. Clean. Recently formatted. Nothing to recover.
The contact left, promising to run one last analysis, but even I could see it in his eyes: this was a dead end.
As the sun dipped behind the skyline, painting the windows with gold and crimson, I sat beside Hardin on the leather couch. Neither of us had spoken in nearly an hour. The laptop sat closed on the table, the USB still plugged in like an unanswered question.
"Tell me about her," I said finally. "Elena Dean. You acted like you knew her name."
He hesitated. "I didn’t know her. But I’ve heard of her. She used to work with my father years ago. A logistics consultant, they said. But the whispers said more. That she was the one he sent to clean up messes. The kind of messes that could ruin a legacy."
"You think she knows everything?"
"No. I think she knows enough to hurt me. To hurt this company. And that means we’re in danger."
A knock came at the door. Hardin stiffened instantly.
We weren’t expecting anyone.
He moved quickly to the hidden panel in the hallway and checked the security monitor. A man in a gray suit stood outside, holding a manila envelope. No ID. No name.
Hardin opened the door a crack.
"Delivery for Mr Richards," the man said.
"From who?"
"No name. Just said it was urgent."
Hardin took the envelope. The man was already walking away by the time he shut the door.
He turned the envelope over in his hands, then tore it open.
Inside were three things: a single photograph, an old key, and a note written in neat block letters.
‘Not everything that was buried stayed dead. Project Seraphim began at the Blackthorn Institute. Ask your mother.’
My breath caught.
Hardin stared at the note like it had personally slapped him.
"What is the Blackthorn Institute?"
"I—" he swallowed. "I thought it was shut down. Years ago. I was told it was a research facility my father funded off the books. Claimed it was for medical advancement. But it got shut down for ethics violations."
"And your mother?"
He looked down at the key, then back at the photo.
The picture was of a building. Stone exterior. Iron gates. Stark, cold lines. A place that didn’t welcome visitors.
"That’s the Institute," he said. "This photo… it’s recent. Look at the license plate in the corner. The year on the tag is this year."
"So it’s still operating."
"Or something else is."
The shadows in the room seemed to grow longer.
I leaned in. "Why would Elena send a drive with nothing and then follow up with this? What kind of game is she playing?"
Hardin folded the photo, slid the key into his pocket, and looked at me with a resolve I hadn't seen in him since the day he inherited the company.
"She doesn’t want to destroy me. Not yet. She wants me to see it for myself. She wants me to open doors my father kept locked."
"Then we’ll open them together," I said.
He nodded. "But we’ll need to move carefully. The Institute... if it’s still active, someone’s paying for it. Someone powerful."
My pulse quickened. "You think it’s someone on your board?"
"Maybe. Or maybe it’s someone worse."
He turned to me, deadly serious.
"Whatever this is, Ariana, it started long before I stepped into this company. This is legacy-level. Bloodline-deep."
We sat there, the weight of a history neither of us had lived pressing in on us.
The flash drive had been empty.
But the message it carried?
Loud and clear.
The ghosts of the Richards family weren’t buried.
They were waiting.
And someone had just handed us the shovel.