Night had long fallen, but Adrian's office was still lit — the pale glow of monitors reflecting across polished glass and half-empty coffee cups.
The envelope Elena had given him lay open beside his laptop.The documents inside weren't just evidence — they were breadcrumbs, each pointing toward a truth he'd avoided for too long.
His father hadn't died in a car crash.He'd been erased.
But what unsettled Adrian most wasn't the revelation — it was the precision. Whoever orchestrated it had known how to make death look like an accident and grief look like fate.
And now, after two lifetimes, Adrian finally had a name that connected it all: Ward Industrial Group.
He leaned back in his chair and opened the decrypted data again. The folder's name flashed across the screen:
Project Nadir – Restricted Archive
It was part of the files he'd recovered months ago, salvaged from an old Vance Holdings server before it went dark. He'd only managed to unlock fragments… until now.
Lines of code scrolled across the screen — fragments of emails, ledger data, file paths, and one consistent tag embedded in the metadata.
Origin: Ward Internal (Encrypted User – "GHOST")
He frowned.
Whoever this "Ghost" was, they had access to both Ward and Vance systems… and had been leaving digital fingerprints in the background of every incident connected to his father's downfall.
He typed a command to trace the source of the latest data packet — something he'd received earlier that morning.A message with no sender, no signature, just a file titled:
"He didn't die alone."
Adrian hesitated before opening it.
A short video clip appeared — security footage, timestamped twelve years ago.The quality was grainy, the colors washed out by static. But the frame showed his father's car entering the old Eastway tunnel… followed by a black SUV.
The crash site reports had always said it was a single-vehicle accident.But here — on the footage no one was ever supposed to see — another car clearly followed, lights dimmed.
And in the corner of the frame, a logo barely visible through the distortion: Ward Corp. Logistics.
Adrian's jaw tightened."Damn it…"
He replayed it twice more, each time freezing the frame, enhancing the image until the logo burned into his memory.
He started typing furiously, opening a secure chat channel on his encrypted server.
Adrian_V: Who sent the footage?System: User encrypted. Proxy bounce through three regions.Adrian_V: Trace pattern.System: Partial match… internal WardCorp subnet.Adrian_V: Access node?System: Device registered to E.W. Private Terminal – Ward Tower.
He froze.
"Elena…"
The knock on his door made him flinch slightly.
"Come in," he called, quickly minimizing the screen.
It was Lydia again, holding two cups of coffee."Still awake?" she asked quietly.
"Trying to be."
She set one cup beside him, eyeing the faint tension in his face. "You found something, didn't you?"
He didn't answer.Instead, he looked at her — really looked. The loyalty, the quiet steadiness, the fatigue of someone who'd stayed even when it made no sense.
"Lydia," he said finally, "if something happened to me… would you keep digging?"
Her brows furrowed. "You're starting to sound paranoid."
"Just answer."
"I'd burn the world if I had to," she said softly. "You know that."
He nodded once."Then I need you to prepare a data relay. Off-site backup. Use the Zurich node. Encrypt it under Vance Protocol 4."
Her eyes widened. "That's restricted—"
"I know," he said. "Do it anyway."
When she left, he reopened the video file.This time, he paused at the final frame — as the crash faded into darkness, a silhouette appeared at the tunnel's edge.Someone standing. Watching.
The image was blurry, but the posture… it was unmistakable. Calm. Hands in pockets. Observing, not panicking.
And though his mind told him it was impossible, his heart recognized the stance.
Elena Ward.
Hours later, at Ward Tower, Elena sat alone in her private office. The city lights painted her face in fragments of gold and gray.
Her assistant had long gone home, but she hadn't moved from her desk.
On her screen, a terminal window blinked faintly:
Transmission sent successfully.
She exhaled — part relief, part regret.
Her reflection looked back at her — sharp, polished, unreadable.But behind her eyes, guilt flickered like a dying flame.
"You'll find it, Adrian," she whispered. "Just not the way you think."
She closed the screen and locked the drive, unaware that on Adrian's end, the same words had just appeared on his monitor — a final trace line revealing the sender's alias.