Chapter 2 - MY FATHER’S HIDDEN NOTEBOOK
Table of Contents 7
01Chapter 1 - THE COMPONENT THAT SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN THERE
02Chapter 2 - MY FATHER’S HIDDEN NOTEBOOK
03Chapter 3 - THE SCIENTIST WHO KNEW TOO MUCH
04Chapter 4 - THE MAN WHO WANTED PROMETHEUS TO BURN
05Chapter 5 - WHAT MY FATHER REALLY LEFT BEHIND
06Chapter 6 - THE OFFER MOM FINALLY ACCEPTED
07Chapter 7 - TWENTY YEARS AFTER THE NINETY-SECOND TEST
CrossTech security moved Mom and me into a private conference room after the message appeared.
Mom hated every second of it.
She paced near the window while I sat at a table clutching my stuffed bear, trying to understand how the father I remembered fixing lawn mowers in our garage had somehow helped design a two-billion-dollar engine.
Ethan entered alone.
No assistants.
No lawyers.
No guards.
Mom immediately stepped in front of me.
“You told us we could leave.”
“You can.”
“Then why are we still here?”
“Because somebody just threatened you using your dead husband’s name.”
Her anger weakened slightly.
Ethan remained several feet away.
“I’m not asking you to trust me. I’m asking you not to walk your daughter outside until we understand who sent that message.”
Mom looked at me.
I knew she wanted to leave.
I also knew she was scared.
“Tell me about Dad.”
She closed her eyes.
“Lily…”
“No more pretending.”
My voice shook.
“I’m ten. I know that’s not old. But if someone is using Dad’s designs and threatening us, I should know why.”
Ethan looked almost impressed.
Mom looked exhausted.
Eventually, she sat beside me.
David Bennett had joined CrossTech twelve years earlier, long before Ethan became publicly known as the billionaire who transformed the company. Back then, CrossTech was smaller, and Ethan’s father still controlled many of its divisions.
Dad specialized in adaptive stabilization systems for high-output energy machines.
Prometheus began as one of his ideas.
Not the enormous engine standing in the laboratory now.
A prototype.
Something small enough to fit inside a workshop.
His theory was that power systems failed because engineers tried to force mechanical components to obey perfectly fixed tolerances. Dad believed a machine should constantly listen to itself and adjust.
“He used to say machines should breathe,” Mom whispered.
I remembered.
Dad said that whenever he tuned old engines.
Ethan nodded.
“David was years ahead of everyone.”
“What happened?”
Mom looked toward him.
“You tell her.”
Ethan did.
David’s design worked.
Then CrossTech executives began discussing military and industrial contracts worth billions.
Dad became uncomfortable.
He wanted safeguards installed before development continued.
Several executives disagreed.
One of them was Dr. Marcus Vale’s predecessor, a man named Harold Kane.
Another was Ethan’s father.
I looked at Ethan.
“Your dad?”
“Yes.”
There was no defense in his voice.
Ethan explained that his father believed David’s safety concerns were slowing progress. Arguments became increasingly hostile.
Then Dad discovered someone had duplicated portions of his design and transferred them into a classified development program without his authorization.
“He threatened to expose it,” Mom said.
Three days later, his car crashed through a highway barrier during heavy rain.
Police ruled it an accident.
Mom never believed them.
Dad had told her the brakes felt strange that morning.
He had planned to take the car to a mechanic.
He never arrived.
I stared at the table.
All my memories of Dad suddenly felt fragile.
His hands covered in grease.
The pencil tucked behind his ear.
The old radio playing while he worked.
I had spent four years believing rain and bad luck killed him.
“What proof did he have?”
Mom looked at me.
“A notebook.”
My heart jumped.
“His notebooks are at home.”
“Not those.”
Dad kept one final notebook hidden.
He told Mom it contained enough information to protect us if anything happened.
After his death, she searched everywhere.
Nothing.
Eventually she assumed he had hidden it at CrossTech.
Ethan asked why she later took a cleaning job in the same building.
Mom stared at him as though the answer should have been obvious.
“To look for it.”
That shocked me almost as much as everything else.
For three years, Mom had scrubbed floors at night while quietly searching places Dad might have used.
She never found anything.
Then I remembered something.
Dad’s tool chest.
After he died, Mom sold most of the large equipment, but we kept a small metal toolbox because one drawer was jammed shut.
It sat beneath my bed.
“Mom.”
She looked at me.
“What?”
“The red toolbox.”
Her expression changed.
“The broken one?”
“The bottom drawer isn’t broken.”
I had discovered the trick months earlier.
You had to press the side latch while pulling the handle.
I never opened it fully because old wires and metal parts were packed tightly inside.
Mom stared at me.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I thought it was just tools.”
We returned home under police escort coordinated through CrossTech and local authorities. Ethan followed in another vehicle despite Mom insisting it was unnecessary.
Our apartment looked embarrassingly small with four security people outside.
I ran to my bedroom.
The toolbox was exactly where I left it.
Mom placed it on the kitchen table.
I pressed the hidden latch.
The bottom drawer opened.
Inside were several old components, a screwdriver, two photographs of me as a baby, and a black notebook wrapped in plastic.
Mom sat down hard.
“David.”
I opened it.
The first pages were engineering diagrams.
Pressure loops.
Valve timing.
Cooling systems.
Then handwriting.
NOTHING SHOULD FAIL AT A PERFECT INTERVAL UNLESS SOMEONE DESIGNED THE INTERVAL.
I felt goosebumps rise along my arms.
Ninety seconds.
Dad had written that years before Prometheus began failing.
We kept reading.
Near the middle, Dad described discovering an unauthorized control device designed to manipulate stabilization feedback.
The drawing looked almost identical to the component I found inside Prometheus.
Ethan stopped breathing.
“This sabotage architecture already existed when David was alive.”
Mom whispered, “Kane.”
Harold Kane had died two years earlier.
If he created the original device, someone else had inherited his work.
The final pages contained initials.
Transfers.
Dates.
One name appeared repeatedly.
M.V.
Mom looked toward Ethan.
“Marcus Vale?”
Ethan immediately shook his head.
“He was a junior engineer back then.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
Neither of us answered.
Then I noticed something strange.
Dad had written one final sentence on the inside back cover.
LILY WILL KNOW WHERE TO LISTEN.
I stared at my name.
I had been six when Dad died.
“Why would he write that?”
Mom started crying again.
“He always said you heard things other people missed.”
Ethan examined the page.
Beneath the sentence was a sequence of numbers.
90-3-1-7.
I recognized the first parts.
Ninety seconds.
Three pulses.
One click.
But seven?
Then I remembered the Prometheus shutdown.
After the click, there had always been a seven-second silence before the main cooling fans stopped.
Everyone at CrossTech thought the test was already over by then.
Maybe Dad didn’t.
I looked at Ethan.
“We need to run it again.”
Mom immediately said no.
I understood why.
Someone had already threatened us.
But Dad had hidden that notebook for years.
He had left my name inside it.
I squeezed her hand.
“Dad wanted someone to hear what happens after the engine stops.”
Ethan did not order us back.
He waited for Mom.
That mattered.
Eventually, she nodded.
We returned to CrossTech just before dawn.
Marcus was waiting in the laboratory.
He looked relieved when he saw us.
Then he noticed the notebook.
His relief disappeared.
“Where did you get that?”
Ethan answered carefully.
“David Bennett.”
Marcus stared at the black cover.
For one moment, I saw fear.
Then he smiled.
“I thought that was destroyed.”
Nobody spoke.
Marcus seemed to realize what he had said.
Ethan’s voice became dangerously quiet.
“How did you know it existed?”
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