Chapter 2
Sofia stared at the envelope on her desk like it might explode.
No return address. No markings. Just her name, typed in black, centered on cream paper.
She broke the seal.
Inside was a single sheet.
Offer to Acquire McCommer Holdings – $10,000,000
All shares. All assets. All rights. Full ownership is transferred to the buyer.
Condition: Sign within 72 hours. No legal counsel. No name disclosure.
Noncompliance voids the offer permanently.
Sofia read it twice, then again. The numbers didn't make sense. Her company was worth a
fraction of that—if anything at all.
She picked up her phone and dialed her banker. "Has anyone shown interest in McCommer
Holdings recently?"
"Nothing serious," he said. "Your numbers scare people."
She hung up without responding.
The lights in her office flickered once. Cheap wiring. She didn't have time for paranoia.
But the timing was wrong. Too clean.
She'd been pushing for meetings all week, begging for partnerships, negotiating debt with
people who didn't even take her seriously.
And now this.
Sofia shoved the envelope aside and opened her laptop.
She pulled up the internal server—scanned old files. Something made her open a locked
folder she hadn't touched in years.
Her mother's records.
She clicked through, fingers moving on instinct. Her mother's death was ruled an accident.
She'd been told it was a simple fire, an electrical short. But the settlement her father
received afterward—was large. Quietly accepted. Quietly buried.
Sofia had been nineteen. Too young to ask the right questions. Too loyal to doubt.
Now someone had dug it up.
And wanted her company.
She stood and locked the office door.
Someone was sending a message. This wasn't business. This was leverage.
Her phone buzzed.
A single text. Unknown number.
"Tick-tock, Miss McCommer."
Sofia didn't call ahead.
Her father's estate stood untouched by time—frozen in a decade-old haze of thick curtains,
antique silence, and the scent of camphor and decay.
She stepped inside.
"Dad?" she called, her voice bouncing through the cold air.
No answer.
She found him in the study, staring out the window in a faded sweater, fingers trembling on
the armrest of his chair. He hadn't shaved in days. A chessboard sat in front of him,
half-played with only black pieces moved.
"Why didn't you tell me about the settlement?" she asked.
He blinked slowly. "They told me not to."
"Who?"
He didn't answer.
"I found the documents. About Mom. That payout—why hide it?"
His jaw clenched. "They were watching. Always watching. I did what I had to do."
His voice cracked at the edges. The clarity was fading already.
"I need the truth. Just once," she said, kneeling beside him.
He looked at her then. And for a second, something cut through the fog in his eyes.
"Your mother died for something she found. Not fire. No wiring. You dig long enough... they'll
come for you too."
He gripped her hand.
"Watch the ones closest to you. The inside always rots first."
Then he leaned back, staring at nothing again.
Back at her office, Sofia locked herself in her glass-walled corner.
She pulled up the access logs for internal documents.
Her mother's file had been opened three nights ago. Not by her. Not from her laptop.
She checked the IP.
Mira's.
Her best friend. Her second-in-command. The only person who'd stood by her when the
company was collapsing.
Sofia didn't want to believe it.
She stormed out of her office and found Mira in the operations room.
"We need to talk. Now."
Mira raised an eyebrow. "What's going on?"
"You opened a confidential archive from my mother's file."
Mira didn't flinch. "No, I didn't."
"The system says otherwise."
"Well, maybe the system's wrong," she said too fast.
Sofia's stomach dropped.
They stared at each other in silence. Years of trust were strained in seconds.
"I need to know if you're the one leaking information," Sofia said quietly.
"I would never—" Mira started, but Sofia was already turning away.
Back in her office, she clicked the video surveillance archive. The footage from that night
was missing.
Only two people had the clearance to wipe it.
Herself.
And Mira.
The silence between them stretched into the next morning.
Mira hadn't shown up for work. No calls. No texts.
Sofia stood at her office window, watching the city blur beneath a pale sky. Her father's
warning echoed in her head:
Watch the ones closest to you.
Sofia opened the system logs again. The access to her mother's file hadn't been a one-time
slip. Mira had entered the archives three separate times—each deeper than the last.
Emails, old court files, and financial records.
Why?
Sofia needed answers. Real ones.
She left the office and drove across town to Mira's apartment.
No answer when she knocked.
She was about to leave when the door creaked open, unlocked.
Inside was chaos.
Drawers half-opened. Clothes on the floor. Laptop missing. The air reeked of fear and haste.
Something happened here—and not long ago.
Sofia stepped carefully around broken glass near the kitchen. A shattered picture frame. She
bent down, heart stuttering.
A photo of the two of them. Smiling. Before things changed.
Pinned under the glass was a note, scribbled in Mira's rushed handwriting:
"I didn't mean to drag you into this. I thought I could fix it. Don't trust anyone. They're
watching everything."
No name. No signature. Just that.
Sofia backed out of the apartment, pulse hammering.
On her way down the stairs, her phone buzzed.
Unknown number. Again.
"You were warned."
She didn't respond.
She drove back to her office. Sat down. Locked her door. And started digging into Mira's
recent activity—every contract, email, hidden file.
And she found it.
A shell company. Quietly funneling money into McCommer Holdings. Small amounts, split
between weeks, disguised as vendor payments.
The sender?
Redacted.
The bank trail stopped in the Cayman Islands.
Sofia stared at the screen, jaw tight.
Mira had been laundering money into her own company... or covering for someone else who
was.
Whoever they were, they had access.
And they had Mira running scared.
This wasn't just a corporate attack.
It was something personal.
And now, Sofia was in the middle of it.
Ethan Cross rested his glass on the table, the amber liquid catching the low light of his
penthouse. He stared out over the city, a quiet smile tugging at his lips. Another wire transfer
had cleared today—clean and unnoticed. Just the way he liked it.
Ethan wasn't just a businessman. He was a master at hiding in plain sight, playing his cards
close. And right now, everything was falling into place.
Across town, Sofia sat on the edge of her couch, fingers curled tightly around her phone.
The weight of everything—Mira went, the money trail, the secrets—pressed down on her
chest like a storm waiting to break.
A sudden knock at the door made her jump.
Lena stood there, eyes wide and voice trembling. "Sofia... we need to talk. It's about Mira."
Sofia swallowed hard. She had no idea how deep this was about to go.
The web was tightening, and somewhere far away, Ethan Cross was pulling the strings.
Lena sat across from Sofia now, both of them silent as the evening light faded around them.
The living room, once a quiet escape, now felt suffocating—like the air itself was holding its
breath.
"I didn't come here to scare you," Lena said at last, her voice low, steady despite the tremble
beneath it. "But I couldn't keep it to myself anymore. Mira and Ethan have been seeing each
other for months. I only found out because I caught her coming out of his building one night.
She made me swear not to say anything."
Sofia leaned back slowly, her spine pressing into the cushions. "And you kept it from me?"
"I thought she had it under control," Lena admitted, guilt flashing across her face. "I thought
maybe she was finally letting herself feel something after everything that happened last year.
But then she started pulling away—missing shifts, ignoring calls, acting... paranoid."
Sofia's chest tightened. She thought back to the last time she'd seen Mira. Her friend had
seemed distracted, on edge. She'd brushed it off as exhaustion. Now, she wasn't so sure.
"Did she ever tell you anything about him?" Sofia asked. "About who he is, what he does?"
Lena shook her head. "Only that he had connections. That he wasn't just wealthy—he was
protected. She said if anyone ever found out about them, it could ruin things. She never
explained what 'things' meant."
Sofia stood and crossed to the window. Outside, the city moved on as if nothing was
wrong—traffic lights blinking, people crossing streets, laughter rising from some open-air bar
down the block. But inside, her world was shifting.
"I don't think Mira just disappeared," Sofia said quietly, more to herself than to Lena. "I think
someone made her disappear. And if Ethan Cross is involved..."
"Then you need to be careful," Lena said, rising from her seat. "He's powerful. Men like that
don't like questions."
Sofia turned back toward her friend. "Then maybe it's time someone started asking."
Lena flinched. "Please, just... don't do anything alone."
"I won't," Sofia said, though even as she made the promise, she wasn't sure she could keep
it.
Because if the strings led back to Ethan, she needed to follow them. Not out of revenge. Not
even out of fear.
But because the longer she stayed silent, the more people like him kept winning.
And Mira didn't deserve to disappear into the shadows.