Chapter 5 - THE FILE THEY WANTED TO ERASEEmergency lights glowed red along the floor.
Chapter 5 - THE FILE THEY WANTED TO ERASE
Emergency lights glowed red along the floor.Victor opened a cabinet and removed a handgun.
Ethan stared at it.
“How many secure apartments have guns hidden in the furniture?”
“Not enough.”
Claire pulled Ethan behind the kitchen wall.
The elevator doors opened.
No one emerged.
Victor aimed toward the darkness.
A metallic object rolled across the floor.
“Down!” he shouted.
Smoke filled the apartment.
Ethan heard glass breaking and footsteps moving through the room.
Claire gripped his sleeve.
Victor fired once.
Someone groaned.
Ethan crawled toward the balcony door and smashed the safety latch with a metal stool.
Cold air entered.
They climbed onto an exterior maintenance platform as smoke poured behind them.
Seventeen floors below, traffic moved like streams of light.
Claire looked down.
“I can’t.”
“You can,” Ethan said.
She stared at him.
Despite everything, he still recognized the woman who feared heights and closed her eyes on glass elevators.
Ethan took her hand.
“Don’t look down.”
They moved along the narrow platform toward an unfinished apartment.
Victor followed, bleeding from a cut above his eye.
Behind them, a masked man appeared on the balcony.
Victor fired.
The man retreated.
They climbed through an open window and escaped through a construction stairwell.
By the time they reached street level, police sirens approached.
Victor did not wait for them.
“The police department has people on Meridian’s payroll.”
Ethan followed him reluctantly.
They spent the night inside a storage facility registered to one of Victor’s attorneys.
At dawn, Claire decrypted Rebecca’s files.
One folder contained personnel records belonging to employees who had died, resigned, or disappeared after discovering financial irregularities.
Daniel’s record had been altered.
The original listed him as missing.
Two days later, someone changed the status to deceased and attached a dental identification report.
The dentist who signed it died three weeks afterward.
Another folder tracked Meridian payments.
Many transactions had been approved by Margaret Holloway.
But several older transfers bore Victor’s digital signature.
Ethan turned toward him.
“You said the orders were forged.”
“Some were.”
“Not all?”
Victor remained silent.
Claire looked at him.
“What did you do?”
Victor sat opposite them.
“After the terminal fire, Meridian approached me.”
“Who?”
“A representative.”
“Name.”
“Samuel Voss.”
Ethan searched the files.
No result appeared.
Victor continued.
“He offered me a choice.”
“What choice?” Claire asked.
“Cooperate or become responsible for the deaths.”
“You cooperated,” Ethan said.
“Yes.”
Victor’s voice contained no defense.
“I approved transfers, destroyed audits, and reassigned employees.”
“Rebecca?”
“No.”
“Daniel?”
“No.”
“How can we know?”
“You can’t.”
Claire closed the laptop.
“All these years, you told me you were trying to expose them.”
“I was.”
“While continuing to work for them.”
“That was the only way to remain alive.”
“You used me.”
Victor looked at her.
“Yes.”
The honesty left Claire speechless.
Ethan almost pitied her.
Almost.
Victor leaned forward.
“I also protected you when Meridian learned who your father was.”
“By making everyone think I was sleeping with you?”
“By giving them a scandal they could understand.”
Claire looked away.
Ethan studied the files again.
“Where was Daniel taken?”
“A Meridian holding site,” Victor said. “Probably outside the city.”
“Probably?”
“Facilities changed every few months.”
The coordinates from Rebecca led to an abandoned paper mill two hours north.
They decided to go without Victor.
He opposed the plan until Claire threatened to take the files and disappear.
They left shortly before sunset.
The road became narrow as the city vanished behind them.
Ethan drove.
Claire sat beside him.
For nearly an hour, neither spoke.
Finally, Claire said, “I never slept with him.”
Ethan kept his eyes on the road.
“I heard you the first time.”
“I need you to believe that.”
“Why?”
“Because I can survive you hating me for lying.”
Her voice broke.
“I don’t know if I can survive you believing I gave him what belonged to us.”
Ethan gripped the steering wheel.
“You gave him secrets.”
“Yes.”
“You gave him loyalty.”
“Sometimes.”
“You let him kiss you.”
“Yes.”
“Then stop reducing betrayal to sex.”
Claire wiped her face.
“I don’t know how to repair this.”
“You don’t repair eleven years with one honest conversation.”
“I know.”
The paper mill appeared after dark.
Its windows were broken, and weeds covered the loading yard.
They entered through a side door.
Inside, rows of rusted machinery created long corridors of shadow.
The coordinates led to a locked office on the second floor.
Ethan forced the door open.
A battery lantern illuminated a table.
On it lay a single recorder.
Ethan pressed play.
Static crackled.
Then Daniel’s voice filled the room.
“Ethan, if you’re hearing this, Rebecca found you.”
Ethan stopped breathing.
Claire covered her mouth.
Daniel continued.
“I need you to know the fire wasn’t meant to kill me.”
A sound echoed downstairs.
A door closing.
Daniel’s recording continued.
“It was meant to erase someone else.”
Footsteps moved beneath them.
“The body they buried under my name belonged to Marcus Hale.”
Claire collapsed into a chair.
Her father.
Daniel continued speaking.
“Claire was never told because Marcus asked me to protect her.”
The footsteps reached the stairs.
Ethan took Claire’s hand and pulled her toward the rear exit.
The recording played its final sentence.
“Do not trust Victor Langley, because Victor knows who ordered the fire.”
May you like
A figure appeared in the doorway.
Margaret Holloway raised a gun.
