Chapter 11 - The Ghost of the Ledger
The air in my penthouse office smelled of old parchment, fresh espresso, and the sharp, metallic scent of ozone that always accompanied a late-night coding binge. It had been six months since the trial ended, six months since the gavel came down like a executioner's axe on my parents' empire of deceit. My mother and father were currently residing in a low-security federal correctional facility in upstate Georgia, wearing matching orange jumpsuits that clashed horribly with my mother's unnatural tan. Taryn, my beloved sister, was doing hard time at a state facility near Milledgeville, where her cellmate reportedly didn't care much for influencers who pushed people off balconies.
I swiveled my ergonomic leather chair toward the floor-to-ceiling windows, looking out over the twinkling lights of Savannah. My spine didn't ache anymore. The titanium rods fused into my vertebrae were as cold and silent as winter steel, but they held me upright. They kept me strong.
My laptop chimed—a gentle, high-pitched ping that usually meant an automated notification from our cybersecurity suite. I reached for my cup of dark roast, took a slow sip, and glanced at the screen.
*ALERT: Unauthorized decryption attempt detected on legacy server partition 04.*
I frowned, setting the mug down with a sharp *clack* that echoed in the quiet room. Partition 04 was the digital graveyard. It contained the encrypted hard drives we had seized during the corporate audit of my parents' front companies—hard drives that the FBI had supposedly scrubbed and archived. Nobody was supposed to be touching them. Not my accountants, not federal investigators, not even me.
My fingers flew across the mechanical keyboard, executing a secure trace route. The incoming IP address wasn't coming from Washington, and it wasn't coming from the prison payphones my parents weren't allowed to use for internet access.
It was local. Less than three miles away, originating from an abandoned brick warehouse down by the riverfront district—a district that my own architectural firm was currently bidding to redevelop.
"Evan?" I called out, not taking my eyes off the rapidly scrolling green code on my monitor.
Footsteps padded softly down the hallway, and a moment later, Evan leaned against the doorframe. He was wearing a soft gray henley, his sleeves pushed up to his elbows, looking every bit the brilliant structural engineer he was. A lock of dark hair fell across his forehead, and his hazel eyes held that quiet, steady concern that had anchored me through the worst of the nightmare.
"You're still awake," he noted, walking over to place a warm hand on my shoulder. His thumb traced a soothing circle against the nape of my neck. "What's going on? You look like you just saw a ghost."
"I think I did," I murmured, pointing to the screen. "Someone is trying to access the old offshore shell-company ledgers. The ones we used to prove they embezzled the sixty-two grand from my corporate account while I was flat on my back in the ICU."
Evan’s expression hardened instantly. The warmth in his eyes vanished, replaced by the sharp focus of a man who knew what it took to protect what he loved. "The FBI said those servers were completely isolated. How is anyone pinging them?"
"They aren't just pinging them," I said, my voice dropping an octave as a decrypted data packet flashed across the terminal. "They're downloading a specific file. Not the financial records. Not the tax evasion schemes."
"Then what?"
I highlighted a string of hexadecimal code and hit enter. A hidden directory tree expanded, revealing a single, password-locked multimedia file that had been buried deep within the metadata of my father's old executive profile.
*Title: PROJECT_JANUS_FINAL_DRAFT.mov*
"It's a video," I whispered, the hairs on the back of my arms standing up. "And it wasn't made by my father. Or my mother."
Evan pulled up a chair beside mine, his knee brushing mine. "Open it."
My heart hammered against my ribs, a sudden, violent rhythm that felt entirely too much like the day of the fall. I took a deep breath, filled my lungs with the scent of pine and coffee, and double-clicked the file.
The screen flickered. A loading bar crawled across the dark display: 10%... 45%... 89%... 100%.
May you like
The video opened with shaky, handheld footage shot from the very same balcony where Taryn had tried to murder me. The lighting was dim, casting long, bruised shadows across the marble floor. But it wasn't the day of the rehearsal dinner.
It was the night *before*.
