Chapter 2 - The Golden Mark
Alexander carried the coin into his private study.
He locked the doors before placing it beneath the green light of his desk lamp.
The serpent symbol seemed almost alive beneath the glass.
He remembered seeing the same mark burned into wooden crates near the harbor years earlier.
Back then, Alexander had not been a billionaire with newspapers calling him a visionary businessman.
He had been a young man surviving among smugglers, corrupt officials, and men who considered violence another form of negotiation.
The organization behind the symbol called itself the Ouroboros Circle.
Most people believed it had disappeared.
Alexander knew organizations like that never truly disappeared.
They simply changed names.
He turned the coin over.
A number had been engraved along its edge.
The study door opened after his security chief entered using an emergency key.
Marcus Vale stopped when he saw Alexander's expression.
Marcus had protected the Blackwood family for nine years.
He was one of the few people alive who knew pieces of Alexander's past.
Alexander slid the coin across the desk.
Marcus stared at it.
The color drained from his face.
"Where did you get this?"
"Lily found it beside the back entrance."
Marcus did not touch the coin.
"Then this is worse than we thought."
Alexander leaned back.
"Tell me everything."
Marcus explained that rumors about the Circle had returned six months earlier.
Warehouses near the eastern docks had changed ownership.
Police evidence had disappeared.
Several wealthy families had been blackmailed.
A customs investigator had vanished.
Alexander's jaw tightened.
"Why wasn't I told?"
"Because there was nothing connecting them to you."
"There is now."
Alexander pulled up the estate's security records.
The cameras covering the east wing had stopped recording for exactly seventeen minutes on the night the clock vanished.
Not sixteen.
Not eighteen.
Seventeen.
That was not an accident.
Marcus checked the access log.
Only five people had entered that section of the property during the blackout.
Sarah.
The housekeeper.
Two security guards.
And Thomas Reed, the new groundskeeper.
Alexander stared at the name.
Thomas had started working at Blackwood Estate eleven days earlier.
Marcus swore quietly.
Alexander stood.
"Bring Thomas to me."
Marcus hesitated.
"What if he's armed?"
Alexander picked up the golden coin.
"Then he had better pray he is intelligent enough not to use it."
Outside the study, thunder rolled across the estate.
Somewhere upstairs, Lily began calling for her father.
Alexander looked toward the ceiling.
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The people behind Sarah's disappearance believed they were attacking a rich businessman.
They had no idea who they had awakened.
