Grace Miller refused to trade herself for another hostage. She and CEO Adrian Cole returned to the glass penthouse where every room is monitored before midnight, using the key from the ambush to enter the archive their enemy had tried to keep buried.
Inside were recordings, legal files, and a wall tracking Grace Miller's life from childhood to the previous night. Someone had planned every loss with patient precision. At the center, a line connected her to CEO Adrian Cole, then continued toward a sealed record neither of them had seen.
CEO Adrian Cole reached it first. The evidence proved the truth neither of them was ready to trust: Grace's supposedly dead sister was the child's birth mother and left evidence inside a lullaby. It also showed why he had been tied to the conspiracy long before he met Grace Miller.
Footsteps filled the corridor. CEO Adrian Cole reached for his weapon, but Grace Miller stopped him. Running had brought her here. This time she would make the person hunting them speak.
The archive door opened. The intruder removed a hood, and Grace Miller's breath caught. The face belonged to someone whose funeral she had attended—and the hostage video had been playing from an empty room.
“You finally found the truth,” the stranger said. “Now choose: expose it and destroy CEO Adrian Cole, or bury it and become the woman who betrays him.”
Grace Miller took CEO Adrian Cole's hand instead.
The stranger smiled and pressed a remote. Behind them, the archive began counting down from ten.