Chapter 4 - The locked drawer
The fluorescent lights hummed above the gray metal table. It had been three days, and Celeste’s glamorous facade was crumbling. Her silver blonde hair was pulled into a messy knot, and there were dark circles under her eyes. Her fingers were stained with ink and dust from the old ledgers.
She needed to get out. She needed to access her hidden emergency funds and flee before Daniel dug any deeper.
Waiting until midnight, when the office was entirely empty, she crept out of her barren office and moved down the hallway toward the server room. Her heels clicked softly on the carpet. She knew there was a master terminal inside that could bypass the company's new firewall. If she could just wire the money to Switzerland, she could disappear.
She swiped her old security card. A red light flashed. Access Denied.
Panic flared in her chest. She swiped it again. Denied.
"Having trouble?" a voice echoed down the dark hallway.
Celeste whipped around to see Mark, her loyal Vice President of Finance. He was the only executive Daniel hadn't fired on the rooftop. Mark was a timid, quiet man in his late forties, and Celeste had always relied on him to bury her financial tracks.
"Mark! Thank God," she whispered fiercely, grabbing his arm. "Your keycard still has administrative clearance, right? You have to let me in. We need to move the offshore funds tonight before Mercer finds them."
Mark looked at her hand on his arm, then slowly looked up into her eyes. The timid, nervous demeanor he had maintained for a decade was gone. His face was entirely blank.
"I can't do that, Celeste," he said calmly.
"What are you talking about? If I go down, you go down!" she hissed. "I pay you too much to grow a conscience now."
Mark reached into his suit pocket and pulled out a sleek, black keycard with a gold insignia. The exact same insignia that was on the folder Daniel had signed.
Celeste stumbled backward, her hand flying to her mouth.
"I don't work for you, Celeste," Mark said softly. "I've been working for Mr. Mercer for the last fourteen months."
The reality hit her like a physical blow. Every financial report, every secret meeting, every hidden transfer—Mark had been feeding it all to Daniel. She hadn't been outsmarted this week; she had been trapped inside a cage for over a year without even knowing it.
"Why?" she choked out, tears of genuine panic stinging her eyes.
"Because Arthur Hayes was a good man," Mark replied coldly. "And what you did to him demands a heavy price."
Before Celeste could scream, her phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out with shaking hands. It was a text message from an unknown number.
Did you find what you were looking for? Look in the bottom drawer of your desk.
May you like
Celeste ran blindly back to her empty office. She threw herself onto the floor in front of the metal table and yanked open the single, small drawer. Inside, there was no money. There were no escape routes. There was only a single, glossy photograph.
It was a picture of Arthur Hayes, her dead partner. But standing next to him, with an arm slung over his shoulder, was a young, ruggedly handsome teenager. It was Daniel Mercer.
