Chapter 7 - NORTHSTAR
Nobody spoke for several seconds.
Then Dad asked the only question that mattered.
“Why?”
Mom looked at him.
“Because we thought we were doing something good.”
Victor Cross laughed from across the room.
Police had placed him near Damian.
“Tell them the whole story, Evelyn.”
Mom ignored him.
She looked at me.
“Northstar began after the recession.”
“Your father and several other business leaders wanted a private system to identify corruption inside companies they invested in.”
Dad frowned.
“I proposed an independent audit consortium.”
“Yes.”
“But Victor changed it.”
Mom nodded.
“Slowly.”
“At first, we collected evidence of fraud.”
“Then evidence became leverage.”
“Leverage became influence.”
“Influence became money.”
I looked at the photograph.
“And you stayed?”
“I tried to dismantle it.”
Victor laughed again.
“No.”
Mom turned toward him.
“You don't get to rewrite this.”
Victor smiled.
“You loved having secrets.”
“You loved knowing which senators had hidden accounts.”
“Which executives bribed regulators.”
“Which judges had debts.”
Dad looked disgusted.
Mom's eyes filled with anger.
“I loved knowing we could stop people who believed wealth made them untouchable.”
Victor nodded toward me.
“Sounds familiar.”
That hit harder than I wanted to admit.
I had locked hundreds of people inside an estate because I believed someone dangerous was among them.
Had I become another version of the same system?
Dad seemed to understand what I was thinking.
“This is different.”
“Is it?”
I looked around.
Police were now controlling the exits.
But before they arrived, I had.
I had made that decision.
Mom touched my hand.
“Claire, Northstar became dangerous because nobody was accountable.”
“That's why I tried to end it.”
Thomas's voice came through my phone.
“And that's why Victor tried to kill me.”
Everyone looked at the phone.
Thomas continued.
“I found evidence that Northstar had moved beyond blackmail.”
I asked,
“Into what?”
“Election manipulation.”
Victor's attorney immediately objected.
“My client will not participate in this conversation.”
Thomas ignored him.
“Government contracts.”
“Market manipulation.”
“Judicial influence.”
“Victor wasn't just collecting secrets anymore.”
“He was selling outcomes.”
Police detectives were listening now.
One asked,
“Mr. Reed, where are you?”
Thomas hesitated.
“Not safe enough to answer.”
The detective said,
“We can protect you.”
Thomas laughed softly.
“So could the people who tried to kill me.”
The line disconnected.
I stared at my phone.
Then Vanessa placed the laptop from Richard's case on a table.
“We don't need Thomas.”
She looked at Victor.
“We have this.”
Victor's expression finally cracked.
Damian shouted,
“Vanessa, don't.”
She opened the laptop.
Password protected.
Vanessa typed something.
Access denied.
Again.
Denied.
Damian smiled.
“You don't know it.”
Vanessa looked at him.
“No.”
“But Claire might.”
I frowned.
“Why would I?”
“Because Thomas chose the password.”
“How do you know?”
“He told me.”
My eyes widened.
“You've spoken to Thomas?”
Vanessa nodded.
“For six months.”
Everything shifted again.
“You knew he was alive?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“Because he told me not to.”
My anger surged.
“You watched me investigate his death.”
“I was helping him survive.”
“You watched his daughter bury an empty coffin.”
Vanessa's face broke.
“I know.”
“You let his family believe he was dead.”
“Because the people who tried to kill him were watching them.”
I wanted to hate her.
But the logic was brutal.
And possible.
Vanessa pushed the laptop toward me.
“Thomas said if we ever reached this moment, you'd know the password.”
I stared at the screen.
A blinking cursor waited.
Think.
Thomas had taught me hundreds of things.
Numbers.
Finance.
Strategy.
But one sentence returned.
Failure is information, not identity.
I typed:
INFORMATIONNOTIDENTITY
The screen unlocked.
Vanessa exhaled.
Folders appeared.
Hundreds of them.
Names.
Companies.
Dates.
Then one folder caught my attention.
CLAIRE VALE.
I stopped breathing.
Dad saw it.
“Open it.”
I clicked.
Photographs filled the screen.
My apartment.
My office.
My car.
My friends.
My movements.
Years of surveillance.
Then I saw a video file.
Recorded tonight.
Timestamped 10:36 p.m.
Before Damian attacked me.
I opened it.
Damian appeared on-screen talking to someone inside the west corridor.
The other person remained outside the camera frame.
Damian said,
“What if she doesn't take the drive?”
A woman's voice answered.
“Then make her.”
My blood turned cold.
I knew that voice.
Vanessa knew it too.
We both turned.
Mom was standing beside us.
But it wasn't her voice.
It belonged to someone else.
Someone who had disappeared from the ballroom during the lockdown.
Dad whispered the name first.
“Rachel.”
Rachel Morgan.
My father's personal chief of staff.
May you like
The woman who had worked for our family for nineteen years.
And the woman who had practically helped raise me.
