The voice on the phone was smooth, confident—too calm for someone issuing a threat. Finn’s instincts flared instantly.“If this is another scare tactic, you’ll have to do better,” Finn said, keeping his tone dry, almost mocking.“You think I’m bluffing?” The voice chuckled softly. “You’ve always underestimated the people behind Ruth. That’s why she never told you everything.”“Then why don’t you enlighten me?”A short pause. Then, almost casually, the voice replied,“Check your inbox. Now.”Finn hesitated, then opened his laptop with one hand while steering the car with the other. The email had no subject, no signature—just a single image attachment. He clicked it.The photo loaded slowly.It showed Clara—her face pale, her wrists bound, seated in a dim room with a metal table. The timestamp was from twenty minutes ago.Finn’s stomach dropped.“What the hell is this?”“A live warning,” the voice said. “You’ve been playing games with the wrong people, Mr. Hayes. Ruth’s assets, her comp

Elara stood between them, small and exact in the center of the humid room. Her eyes were Ruth’s—cold, precise, and heartbreakingly familiar—and when she spoke, there was no tremor in her voice, only the quiet of someone who’d learned how to be heard.“You told him,” she said to Shawn without turning, “that I was Ruth’s daughter.”Shawn inclined his head. “I told him the truth.”“You told him what you wanted him to believe,” Elara answered. “There’s a difference.”Finn watched both of them, listening for the lie that made this all make sense. He had spent too long learning how to read faces. Tonight, that skill felt like a curse; every small flinch seemed to be a code.“Why are you here?” Finn asked instead. His voice was flat. He tried to keep it casual, to make it a negotiation, not an interrogation. “What do you want?”Elara’s head tilted. “What do I want? I want my mother’s life back. I want the truth. And I want the people who stole her from me—her projects, her money, everything—

The night was cruelly silent when Finn returned to his house. The rain had stopped, but the scent of wet asphalt still clung to the air, seeping through the open window of his car. The rhythmic tick of the cooling engine was the only sound accompanying his thoughts — thoughts that refused to quiet down.Shawn’s words kept echoing inside his head: “You don’t want to end up like before, do you?”Finn tightened his grip on the steering wheel. That bastard had no right to bring up his past — no one did. Not after everything he’d clawed his way through to bury it. The asylum, the whispers, the humiliating files that labeled him unstable. He’d rewritten his life piece by piece, layer by layer, until he became untouchable. And yet, tonight, one stranger had ripped that illusion apart with a single sentence.When Finn entered the house, the silence was too thick. He walked past the living room, where Ruth’s old portraits still hung. He’d left them there on purpose — a performance of sentiment

Finn read the message again and let the words sit like cold metal in his palm: You have 24 hours, Finn. Come alone. Or the truth dies with me.Outside, the city moved on without him—trains, traffic, people who didn't know they were extras in someone else’s story. He felt smaller than the headlines that had once celebrated him. He burned through options the way other men burned cigarettes. Call the police and risk Clara dying. Bring his lawyers and get ambushed. Send Audrey and lose her. The calculus was brutal and simple: go alone, or let the living be buried.Audrey arrived before noon with a thermos and a file thick enough to be a weapon. Her face held that impossible mix of professional concern and something personal that made Finn both want and not want to confide in her.“You shouldn’t go,” she said immediately, voice flat. She didn’t ask; she told him. “They’ll set this up. Whoever has Clara has leverage. You going in naked is—”“Necessary,” he interrupted. “I can’t bring a crow

The drive back to the city felt endless. The storm had moved inland, throwing knives of rain across the windshield. Every flash of lightning lit the outline of Finn’s jaw, tight with thoughts he couldn’t control. Mara sat beside him, her hands gripping the seatbelt, her silence louder than any confession.“Say something,” Finn muttered finally, eyes fixed on the road.Mara’s voice was quiet, almost brittle. “I didn’t know she was alive. I swear to you, Finn. Ruth told me Clara died during the last trial.”Finn’s fingers twitched against the steering wheel. “You worked for Ruth. You knew more than you should have.”“I was her assistant, not her priest,” Mara snapped, but the tremor in her tone betrayed her. “I handled logistics, meetings, papers. I wasn’t part of her… experiments.”Finn’s laugh was low and bitter. “Experiments. You make it sound like she was studying lab rats, not people.”“She was,” Mara whispered.That shut him up. For a moment, all that filled the car was the sound