Amara's pov :
I didn't sleep.
Not really. I tried. Sat on my bed with my back against the wall, my legs pulled up and my phone in my hands. I had checked the locks twice, the windows, then my phone again. The two photos were still there, sitting in my messages like a gift from someone who wanted me to know exactly how close they could get.
The first one was from the gala, the balcony, taken from behind me at an angle like whoever took it was standing right where I'd been when I found the carved rose. I didn't remember anyone there. I'd turned around and the balcony was empty, but the photo said otherwise.
The second was from last night outside the club, taken from across the street, clear enough to make out my face and the way I was looking down at my phone, the exact moment I'd opened the first photo.
Someone had been there watching me , open proof that they'd been watching me before that.
I couldn't just sit here.
I opened my laptop, the screen light hurting my eyes in the dark but I didn't care. I pulled up everything I had on Vale Industries: every article I'd saved, every public filing, every scrap of information I'd collected over the past few years since I started looking into Dad's death again.
It wasn't much and every time I got close to something a door closed, a source stopped returning calls, a document disappeared from a database I'd checked the week before, like someone was cleaning up behind me in real time.
But tonight I wasn't looking for doors, I was looking for cracks.
I cross-referenced the fraud leak with Vale's old company records, the publicly available ones: annual reports, board meeting minutes, financial disclosures going back fifteen years. I went through them one by one, slowly, carefully, the way Dad taught me to read documents, not just the words but the gaps between them.
It took hours.
Around 4 AM my coffee went cold so I made another cup and kept going, the apartment so quiet I could hear the fridge humming, the occasional car outside, my own breathing.
And then I found it.
A name buried in a financial report from twelve years ago, listed as a consultant for a project with no other details, no description of what the project was, no timeline, no outcome, just a name and a payment amount large enough to make me sit up straighter.
Marcus Reyes,My father's name.
I stared at it for a long time.
The last time I saw Dad alive, he'd crouched down to my twelve-year-old height in our kitchen. Mom was upstairs,It was just us. He'd looked me in the eyes and said, "If something happens to me, Amara, remember it wasn't an accident. Promise me you'll remember."
I'd promised because I didn't understand what he meant, because I thought he was being paranoid, because I was twelve and didn't think parents could just die.
Three days later he was dead.
Thirty-four years old,Healthy,No warning.
Just gone.
And now, sixteen years later, I was finally starting to understand why.
Dad had worked for Vale Industries nineteen years ago, I knew that, hired as an external auditor, did some contract work. That was all Mom ever told me. She didn't like talking about it, said it was boring corporate stuff and changed the subject every time I asked.
But this wasn't boring.
I wrote the details down in my notebook, careful and neat. Dad's handwriting had been like that too, small and tidy. He used to say writing by hand slowed your brain down enough to actually think. I started doing it after he died, copied his style without meaning to. Sometimes when I look at my own notes I see his handwriting staring back at me and it hurts in a way I can't explain.
I went back through the report and found two other names I didn't recognize. One appeared in multiple filings over five years with consistent payments on a regular schedule, like a salary but for something Vale didn't want on their official payroll.
The other showed up once and then vanished completely, gone like they were never there.
I wrote those down too, then pulled up the next report and the one after that. Each one took me deeper, showed me another piece of something I couldn't quite see the shape of yet, but I could feel it the way you feel a storm coming before the sky actually changes. Something big was here,
something that had been buried for a long time.
And my father had been part of it.
By the time the sun started coming through my window I had three pages of notes and a headache throbbing behind my eyes. I hadn't slept, hadn't eaten, and my hands were shaking slightly from too much coffee and not enough rest.
I picked up my phone and called Ethan.
He answered on the third ring, groggy. "Amara? It's six in the morning."
"I know. Sorry. I need you to do something for me."
A pause, I could hear him shifting, probably sitting up. "Are you okay? You sound weird."
"I'm fine. Listen." I kept my voice low even though I was alone, habit now. "I need you to look into some names for me. Quietly. Don't use the newsroom databases, use your own."
"My own? Amara, what's going on?"
"Just do it. Please. And don't tell anyone at the office."
Another pause, longer this time. When he spoke again the grogginess was gone. "Someone's bothering you, isn't it? This is about the gala story."
I didn't answer. He took that as a yes.
"How bad?"
"Bad enough. Will you help me or not?"
"Of course I'll help you. Send me the names. But Amara..." He hesitated. "Be careful. Whatever this is, it sounds bigger than just a story."
"I know." I hung up before he could ask anything else.
I sent him the names through an encrypted message, then closed my laptop and sat there for a while staring at nothing. The morning light was getting brighter, the city waking up outside my window, people heading to work and living normal lives, not being photographed by strangers in the dark.
I needed to shower, eat something, act normal.
Normal. Right.
---
Sarah was already awake when I came out of my room, sitting at the kitchen table with a mug of tea, just woke up. She looked up when I walked in and her eyes did that thing they always do when she's reading me, quick scan from top to bottom.
"You look terrible."
"Thanks."
"When did you last sleep?"
"Does it matter?" I went to the kitchen and poured myself water, my hands still shaking a little. I hoped she didn't notice.
She noticed.
"Amara." Her voice changed, softer, more careful, the way she talked to patients when she was about to deliver bad news. "Sit down."
"I'm fine, Sarah."
"You have dark circles under your eyes, your hands are shaking, and you haven't eaten. That's not fine, that's stressed." She pulled out the chair across from her. "Sit."
I sat because arguing with Sarah when she used that voice was pointless, she'd just wait me out and she was good at that.
We looked at each other for a moment, the kitchen quiet with morning light coming through the window, a normal scene but nothing about it felt normal.
Sarah wrapped both hands around her mug. "Talk to me."
I thought about lying, about saying it was just the story or writer's block or bad coffee, but Sarah had known me since college and she could spot my lies from a mile away, never let me get away with them.
So I told her.
Not everything, not the details of what I'd found in the reports, but the important part: the photos, the messages, someone following me and watching me at the gala and the club, somewhere I couldn't see.
Sarah listened without interrupting, her expression not changing much, but I watched her knuckles go white around the mug.
When I finished the silence stretched between us.
"Okay," she said finally. "Go to the police."
"No."
"Amara."
"They won't help. Someone is sending me photos from a phone with no traceable number. I have no proof except two pictures and a text message that could mean anything. What are they going to do, tell me to change my number?"
"It's stalking and that's a crime."
"It is, and proving it requires more than what I have right now." I leaned forward. "I'm working on it, I have leads, I just need more time."
Sarah stared at me and I could see the war happening behind her eyes, wanting to shake sense into me but knowing I wasn't going to back down because she knew me, knew that once I started pulling at something I didn't stop even when I should.
"You're being stubborn."
"I know."
"You're always stubborn."
"I know."
"And one day it's going to get you into real trouble."
I looked at her, really looked. Sarah who found me crying in a college bathroom at 3 AM one night and didn't leave until I told her why, who listened to the whole story without flinching, who never once said "let it go" or "move on" like everyone else did, who just looked at me and said "then we find out what really happened" like it was obvious.
"Someone took my father from me, Sarah." My voice came out quieter than I meant. "And now they're trying to scare me into stopping. I can't do that."
She held my gaze for a long time, then let out a breath and reached across the table to squeeze my hand.
"Then let me help."
"Sarah..."
"I'm not asking, I'm telling you." Her grip tightened. "You won't do this alone, not anymore. That's the deal."
I wanted to argue, my instinct was to argue. I'd been doing this alone for years and it was safer that way, easier, no one else to worry about or put in danger.
But the photos were still on my phone and someone had been close enough to take them, close enough to be right there in the dark watching me without me knowing.
And I was tired, so tired of pretending I wasn't scared.
"Okay."
Sarah nodded, then let go and picked up her tea like we'd just been talking about the weather.
That was Sarah, she didn't make a big deal out of things, she just made sure you knew she was there.
I finished my water and sat for a while longer watching the light move across the kitchen table. My phone buzzed once, Ethan confirming he'd received the names. I put it away.
Somewhere out there someone was watching me, someone who knew my schedule and locations and habits, someone patient enough to photograph me from the shadows and wait.
I didn't know who, not yet.
But I was going to find out.