The hallway outside Van's office had a particular silence that day —a muffled kind of quiet, heavy with tension. He’d become good at recognizing that kind of silence. It meant someone was trying not to be heard. Or worse, someone was already listening.Van leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled, eyes fixed on the ceiling. The morning had started like any other —coffee on his desk, a stack of reports from the operations team, a gentle kiss from Ivy before he left home —but something had been bothering him since last week.The unsigned document.He pulled the file from his drawer again. It was a routine acquisition proposal —an old real estate property the company planned to convert into a technology hub. Everything seemed in order. Legal had stamped it, finance had approved it, even the board had given a soft greenlight. But the document bore Andrew’s initials. Only… Andrew hadn’t been at the board meeting when that vote was passed.Van had checked.And Andrew didn’t know he knew t

Van leaned back in his office chair, the early morning light filtering through the floor to ceiling windows of the high rise building that housed the headquarters of his company. A thick folder sat open on his desk, pages of legal documents and board memos half read. The city below bustled with energy, but Van found his mind wandering. His thoughts weren’t on mergers, reports, or strategy. They kept drifting back home —to Ivy, their children, and the small, steady rhythm of domestic life he’d come to cherish."Sir?" A member of staff, Mara, peeked in, holding a tablet. "Boardroom is ready. Everyone’s waiting."Van sat up straight, nodding. "Thank you, Mara. I’ll be there in two minutes."He gathered the folder, took one last glance at the photo on his desk— a candid shot of Ivy and the twins chasing each other in the backyard— and sighed softly. He missed them already, and the day had only begun.The board meeting was long, spiced up with tension. Andrew sat across from Van, arms fold

Van stood by the wide glass window of his office, a steaming mug of black coffee in hand. The city skyline stretched beyond him —sharp steel and foggy sunlight colliding in a haze of gold. But none of it brought him peace. Not this morning.He had barely slept. Even the quiet warmth of Ivy nestled beside him hadn't eased the pressure building inside his chest. The meeting from yesterday kept playing in his mind, looping with new meaning every time he replayed Andrew’s words.“Don’t dwell on the past, Van. It never leads anywhere good.”It was meant to sound like brotherly advice, but there had been something under it. A flicker in Andrew’s expression, just enough to nudge Van’s instincts awake.Something was off.He turned away from the window and crossed the room to his desk. His assistant had left a folder marked "Private: Internal Review" on top. He opened it quickly, scanning through procurement records, personnel changes, and flagged audits. Nothing seemed particularly suspicious

Van stood before the towering windows of his office, the city below awash in a gray drizzle that blurred the skyline. From up here, everything seemed so distant —quiet and orderly. But beneath the polished surface of the glass and steel, things were unraveling. He could feel it.It had been a month since the meeting with his family. Andrew had grown unusually distant since then, barely answering Van’s calls and avoiding internal meetings under the guise of travel or back -to -back commitments. Van had let it slide for a while— he didn’t want to push too hard —but the silence was starting to weigh on him.This morning’s reports had only made it worse. A quiet investigation he had launched into the company’s archival records revealed a number of discrepancies in the years Andrew had handled strategic partnerships. Most of the flagged deals were with now defunct shell companies, structured in a way that ensured they flew under radar. There wasn’t anything definitive yet. But Van trusted

The fallout came slowly. Not in explosions or boardroom outbursts, but in carefully worded emails, strategic silences, and a subtle shift in how people looked at Van when he walked the halls of the company. By the end of the week, three long serving board members had requested private meetings. Two of them wanted clarity on what Van meant by "cooperating with authorities." The third —Mr. Halston, one of the older shareholders who’d known Van’s father personally— told him plainly: “You’re either incredibly brave… or incredibly reckless.” Van had smiled tightly and replied. “Maybe both.” By Friday, it was raining again. It seemed to be raining a lot the past few days. Van stood in his office, staring at the storm outside while his legal team drafted the first phase of the transparency review. His phone buzzed intermittently, but he ignored it. His mind was already five steps ahead —calculating, navigating, bracing. There was still no word from Andrew. No reply to texts. No retur