Olivia
The promise we made in the quiet of our kitchen, surrounded by the wreckage of our fear and secrets, was a turning point. The wall between my work and our life came down. From that moment on, we were a team in every sense of the word.
The first order of business was Lily. After giving our statements to the police and ensuring Michael Jr. was booked for assault, we drove through the night. The little girl, exhausted and terrified, had fallen asleep in the back of my car, clutching a teddy bear one of the officers had given her. Ethan drove, one hand on the wheel, the other holding mine, his grip a constant, reassuring pressure.
We met my parents at a discreet private airfield a hundred miles away. My father, the stoic, practical lawyer, and my mother, with her warm, enveloping hugs, were our anchors in this storm. They took Lily into their care without question, promising to keep her safe until Sarah-Jane could be relocated through the witness protection program.
"You're doing the right thing, Olivia," my dad said, his eyes full of a pride that meant more to me than any commendation from my boss. "But for God's sake, be careful."
"She has me," Ethan said, his arm circling my waist. "I'm not letting her out of my sight."
Driving back to the farmhouse as the sun rose, a new sense of purpose settled over us. The fear was still there, a low hum beneath the surface, but it was overshadowed by a shared resolve. We were no longer operating in separate spheres of protection; we were a united front.
Back in our kitchen, with the morning light streaming in, I laid everything on the table. I walked Ethan through every detail of the case, from my first meeting with Sarah-Jane to the contents of the small, pink diary. I showed him the coded entries, the cryptic symbols and dates that held the key to dismantling the Connolly empire.
He listened intently, his sharp mind, the one that had found the flaws in my festival budget, immediately grasping the complexities of the case. He wasn't just my concerned husband anymore; he was my partner. My strategist.
"This isn't just a legal battle," he said, his fingers tracing the embossed unicorn on the diary's cover. "This is a war. And they won't play by the rules."
"I know," I said. "That's why I need more than just the DA's office. I need our own team."
"I've already made a call," he said, a grim smile on his face. "He's on his way."
An hour later, Jake arrived, a high-tech laptop bag slung over his shoulder and a worried look on his face. He hugged me tightly.
"When Ethan called and told me what happened… Liv, I'm so sorry you're in this."
"I'm not in it alone," I said, glancing at Ethan. "Not anymore."
We set up a war room in Ethan's home office. The satellite photos of the Connolly estate were still on his monitor, a stark reminder of what we were up against. I laid the diary on the desk.
"This is it," I said. "The whole conspiracy, hidden in a child's diary. Sarah-Jane says it's all in code. We need to break it. And we need to do it fast."
Jake's eyes lit up with the thrill of the challenge. "My kind of puzzle," he said, already connecting his laptop. "Let's see what this monster has to say."
The three of us huddled around the desk. Ethan, the master strategist with an insider's understanding of corporate finance; Jake, the digital wizard who could find patterns in chaos; and me, the legal mind who knew what to look for. The Unbeatables, reunited for a much higher-stakes game.
Jake began by scanning the pages, his fingers flying across the keyboard. "The entries are dated. And there are recurring symbols next to certain names. A star, a dollar sign, a gavel…"
"The gavel has to be judges," I said, my mind racing. "The dollar sign, illegal payments. What about the star?"
"Politicians?" Ethan suggested. "Stars of the party?"
"It's a start," Jake said, typing furiously. "I can cross-reference the dates of the entries with public records—court rulings, zoning approvals, campaign donations. If there's a pattern, I'll find it."
For hours, we worked. Ethan brewed coffee, I organized the information into a legal framework, and Jake delved deeper and deeper into the digital rabbit hole. We were a well-oiled machine, our different skills complementing each other perfectly.
Late in the afternoon, Jake let out a low whistle. "Oh, you are not going to believe this."
He turned his laptop around. On the screen was a list of names, each one paired with a date and a dollar amount. They were some of the most powerful people in the state: judges, city council members, even a state senator.
"I cracked the code for the financial entries," Jake explained. "It's a simple substitution cipher, tied to the stock market closing prices on the date of the entry. It's a classic money laundering scheme, funneling bribes through shell corporations disguised as political donations."
I stared at the screen, a chill running down my spine. The scope of the corruption was staggering. It was bigger, and went higher, than any of us had imagined. We weren't just taking on a mob boss. We were taking on the entire political establishment he owned.
"This is the case of a lifetime," I breathed, a mixture of terror and exhilaration coursing through my veins.
"This is a declaration of war," Ethan said, his voice grim. He came to stand behind me, his hands resting on my shoulders, a silent, solid presence. "And we just fired the first shot."
We had the key. We had the evidence. But as I looked at the names on that screen, I knew that cracking the code was the easy part. The hard part, the dangerous part, was just beginning. And the enemy we had just made was more powerful than we could have ever dreamed.