Chapter 10 - THE REAL PLAN
The flash drive contained one video.
No audio.
The footage showed Ethan entering our house while I was away.
Melissa followed.
They went into my office.
Ethan opened the safe.
But instead of taking documents, he removed a small black box.
I recognized it.
My father's old security device.
I had inherited it years earlier.
I thought it was empty.
It wasn't.
The box contained an encrypted storage unit.
My father had built a private archive before he died.
I had never accessed it.
Apparently, someone else knew about it.
The video continued.
Ethan handed the device to another man.
A man I recognized.
My CFO.
I couldn't breathe.
The person I had trusted most inside my company was involved.
The acquisition failure suddenly made sense.
The missing documents.
The strange transfers.
The shell companies.
All of it.
My CFO had been feeding information to Ethan's network.
Melissa had been used as the access point.
But there was one problem.
The archive contained evidence of something far bigger.
Financial crimes.
Political payments.
Hidden ownership.
My father's old company had uncovered a network years earlier.
He had stored the evidence.
And someone had spent years trying to find it.
Now they knew I had it.
Except I didn't.
Or so I thought.
The flash drive contained another file.
A message from my father.
It was recorded years before his death.
“Daniel, if you're watching this, something has gone wrong.”
I stared at the screen.
His face appeared.
Older.
Tired.
Serious.
“I created a security archive because I discovered people inside the company were selling information.”
My throat tightened.
“I didn't trust the board.”
He paused.
“And I didn't trust the police.”
Then he said something that changed everything.
“If anyone tries to use your family against you, they already know about the archive.”
The video ended.
I sat motionless.
My father had known.
He had prepared for this.
But why had he never told me?
The answer came in the next file.
A list of names.
One name was highlighted.
Ethan Harper.
Another was my CFO.
And the final name was someone I had never expected.
Melissa.
Not as a victim.
As an active participant.
The evidence showed she had been involved longer than she admitted.
Years longer.
She hadn't simply been recruited after falling into debt.
She had approached Ethan first.
I felt betrayed all over again.
I called Detective Reed.
“There's more.”
“What?”
“My wife lied about when this started.”
He arrived within minutes.
We reviewed the files.
The timeline showed Melissa had contacted Ethan almost three years earlier.
Before the first injury.
Before the financial problems.
Before she ever claimed she was afraid.
The motive wasn't just money.
It was access.
She had married me knowing about the company.
Knowing about the archive.
Knowing my father had hidden something valuable.
The entire marriage suddenly looked different.
I remembered the first time we met.
How quickly she had asked about my father's business.
How interested she had been in family finances.
How she had encouraged me to travel more.
How she had convinced me to give her access.
And then I remembered Lily.
Our daughter had been born after we married.
Was she the reason Melissa stayed?
Or was Lily simply another part of the plan?
That question haunted me.
Then Detective Reed found something.
A DNA report.
It was from a test ordered privately months earlier.
The subject?
Lily.
The father listed?
Unknown.
I stared at the document.
“What is this?”
Reed looked at me.
“We didn't know about it.”
The report contained one sentence:
Biological relationship with Daniel Carter: inconclusive.
My heart stopped.
I looked at the date.
The test had been ordered by Melissa.
And the second sample belonged to someone named Ethan Harper.
I couldn't breathe.
“Are you telling me...”
Reed shook his head.
“We don't know yet.”
I stared at Lily's photograph.
The little girl I had raised.
The little girl who called me Dad.
The little girl who had suffered because adults wanted something from my family.
I didn't care what the DNA said.
She was my daughter.
But suddenly another question appeared.
May you like
Why had Melissa secretly tested her?
And what had she been afraid I would discover?
