Chapter 12 - The Midnight Knock
The gala had been a bloodbath of social ruin for Eleanor.
Before the evening ended, Thomas Holloway had publicly taken the stage, presenting Amanda with the Historic Restoration of the Year Award and announcing a joint forty-million-dollar preservation fund under her sole operational control. In the foyer, state banking examiners had served Victor Vance with an emergency subpoena while Eleanor’s closest social allies quietly slipped away toward the exits, abandoning her in the center of the emptying hall.
By two in the morning, Amanda was back at her river workshop.
The high-society gown was gone, replaced by comfortable flannel and jeans. The room was illuminated only by the warm glow of an architect's desk lamp. Spread out before her were the final title registries that would officially transfer the legal deed of Magnolia Crest back into her name on Monday morning.
The silence of the marsh was absolute, broken only by the rhythmic clicking of tree frogs and the distant lap of the black river water against the dock pilings.
Then came the sound.
A loud, frantic crashing at the perimeter gate.
Amanda stood up instantly, grabbing her heavy steel flashlight. She walked toward the workshop’s front windows, parting the blinds.
Through the rain that had begun to fall, she saw headlights—not an expensive car, but a battered pickup truck idling wildly in the access ditch, its bumper crushed against the security fence.
A figure tumbled out of the driver's side, crawling across the wet gravel toward her workshop door.
Amanda threw the deadbolt back, gripping a heavy iron wrench in her right hand as she swung the heavy wooden door open.
It was Ethan.
He was soaked to the bone, his face bruised, his lip split and bleeding. He wasn't wearing his fine linen clothes; he was wearing an oil-stained work jacket, his breathing coming in ragged, terrified gasps. In his trembling hand, he clutched a shattered external hard drive smeared with grease and dark red blood.
"Ethan!" Amanda knelt down, catching him by the shoulders before he collapsed onto the concrete floor. "What happened? Who did this?"
Ethan looked up at her, his eyes wide with an animal terror she had never seen before.
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"She wasn't... she wasn't building a tower in Savannah, Amanda," Ethan choked out, his fingers digging into her forearms with desperate strength. "Mother didn't mortgage the land to a bank. She took forty million dollars from the Russian syndicate out of Miami. They came for the deed tonight. They found the empty safe... and she told them you had it."
Before Amanda could speak, the distant roar of two black SUVs cut through the rain down the lane, their high beams sweeping blindingly across the workshop yard.
