Zara walked through the office door like she was carrying a lead weight in her chest.
She kept her eyes low, her movements slow, purposeful.
She looked like she hadn’t slept in days, with dark rings under her eyes and a nervous twitch near her lip.
Lily was at the desk, her face tight with worry.
She stood up the moment Zara crossed the threshold.
“Where have you been?” Lily asked, her voice raspy.
“I was at your building.
I was about to file a report.
I thought something had happened to you.”
Zara didn’t flinch.
She had practiced this look in the mirror until it felt like her own.
She met Lily’s eyes with a steady, sad gaze.
“I’m sorry.
I had to go see my mom.
I woke up, and I just… I needed to go.
I wasn’t in a good place, and I couldn’t explain it.
I’m sorry I scared you.”
Lily looked at her for a long second, searching for the crack in the story.
She didn’t find one.
Lily heaved a sigh of relief.
She crossed the room and pulled Zara into a tight, desperate hug.
Zara’s arms came up slowly, hugging Lily back, but her eyes were fixed on the office wall, completely flat and empty.
“Don’t disappear like that again,” Lily whispered into her shoulder.
“You scared me.”
“I won’t.
I promise,” Zara said.
She hugged me, Zara thought, her arms tightening around Lily’s back.
She actually hugged me.
I am the worst person in this room.
I am the worst person in this building.
I am the worst person in this whole story, and I don’t know how to undo what I’ve done.
Two hours later, Lily moved to the filing cabinet.
She needed the prosecution file for a call with Nathan.
She pulled the drawer open, but her hand stopped in mid-air.
Ah!
The folder wasn’t there.
She pulled the drawer out further, looking behind the hanging files.
Nothing.
She checked the one below it.
It was empty.
She turned to her laptop, fingers flying over the keys to pull up the digital backup.
The folder icon was there, but when she clicked it, a small box popped up on the screen: File not found.
What the hell is going on?
She checked the external drive.
The drive was there, but it was empty.
She stood up slowly, her hands very still.
The silence in the office was heavy.
“Zara?”
Zara looked up from her desk.
“Yes?”
“The files are gone.
All of them.
The cabinet, the laptop, the backup drive.”
Zara’s heart skipped but she composed.
She stood up and walked to the doorway of Lily’s office.
She looked at the open, empty cabinet and pressed a hand over her mouth.
“What… how?
Where did you keep them?”
“Right here,” Lily said, her voice dropping to a whisper.
“The same place they have always been.”
“Could you have moved them?
Maybe you…,”
“I did not move them, Zara.” Lily said, bitterly.
Lily’s voice wasn’t loud.
It was soft and quiet.
She pressed her palm flat against the cold metal of the filing cabinet, staring into the dark, hollow drawer.
Then, without a sound, the tears started.
They tracked down her face, slow and steady, while her face stayed completely blank and controlled.
“How am I supposed to bring justice to my parents?” Lily asked the empty room.
“How?”
She stopped, pressed her fingers into her eye sockets, and took a sharp breath through her nose.
*****
By 3 AM, Lily was sitting on the kitchen floor.
She hadn’t meant to sit down there, but her legs had just stopped working.
Marcus found her there, the house dark around them.
He didn’t ask questions.
He didn’t tell her to get up.
He just sat on the cold tile beside her.
“You are still awake?” He said.
“Yes…Marc, I need to talk to you…
The prosecution files are missing”.
She started sobbing.
“Come on, Lily…hold on, don’t cry.
Did you search properly?” Marcus crossed his arms across her neck.
“Yes…I did.
I searched.
Everything is just slowly falling apart.
First it was Derek’s death, then James turned against me and all of a sudden the files are missing”.
“Do you have any suspects?” Marcus asked her.
“I…I am thinking Richard but he can’t access my office and…”
Lily’s phone buzzed.
Ethan’s name lit up the dark.
Marcus glanced at the screen, his jaw tightening into a hard line.
“Don’t pick it up.”
“Yes I know”.
Lily stared at the phone.
It kept vibrating.
Two minutes later, it started again.
Marcus reached out, grabbed the phone from her hand, and swiped to answer.
“She is not available,” Marcus said, his voice hard as stone.
“And if you call this number again, I will have my lawyer explain to your lawyer what harassment looks like.
You have caused enough damage.
Stay away from her.”
He hung up and set the phone on the tiles.
Lily looked at him.
His eyes were dark, focused entirely on her face.
“Marcus…,”
“He doesn’t know the damage he has caused,” Marcus said, his voice dropping.
“He has no right to keep reaching for you.”
Lily looked at him for a long moment, seeing the way he watched her, the way he held the space around her.
She leaned forward, and pressed her lips to his.
It was soft, real, a desperate anchor in a night that had taken everything from her.
He kissed her back, his hand coming up to cup her cheek, his skin warm against her face.
She pulled back, pressing her hand against his chest to stop him.
“Wait.
Please.
Not like this.
Not tonight.”
He went completely still.
He nodded once, slowly, and pulled his hand away.
“Whenever you are ready,” he said and kissed her forehead then he went to bed.
Marcus was asleep.
Lily sat at the kitchen table, the only light coming from the microwave clock.
Do I love Marcus?
He’s always been here for me and….
Her phone buzzed on the table.
She looked at the screen.
A message from an address she didn’t recognize.
Her eyes scanned the subject line.
“I was at the Sinclair Foundation the night your father was there.
I saw what happened.
I have been waiting to be found.”
“Tell me when and where, and I will be there.”
Lily didn’t wait for the sun to rise.
She typed the reply at 4:47 AM, her fingers cold against the glass screen.
The response from Carol Reeves arrived four minutes later.
They agreed to meet at a coffee shop three blocks from Carol’s office.
Lily walked in ten minutes early, her heart hammering a frantic, uneven rhythm against her ribs.
Carol was already at a corner table, a woman in her forties with sharp eyes and hands that hovered around her coffee cup like she was protecting it from the wind.
She looked like someone who kept receipts for every transaction of her life, just in case the world decided to go sideways.
“I have thought about calling someone for two years,” Carol said, skipping any polite preamble.
Her voice was thin, brittle.
“I just never knew who was safe.”
Lily sat down, her posture rigid.
“Tell me what you saw.”
“It was a Foundation dinner.
Chen’s Catering, your father’s company, was handling the setup,” Carol said, her gaze darting to the shop door before locking onto Lily.
“I was coordinating the event.
Your father was in the back corridor, just outside the boardroom.
I noticed him because he was reading something off a table that had been left unattended.
It was a printed spreadsheet.
Foundation accounts.”
“And Richard?” Lily breathed, the name tasting like ash.
“He came out of the boardroom a moment later,” Carol continued.
“He saw your father looking at the document.
Your father looked up.
They made eye contact for maybe three seconds.
But Richard’s face… I have never seen a man look at someone that way.
It wasn’t anger.
It was… a decision.”
Lily leaned in, her voice barely a thread.
“What did you do?”
“I wrote it in my coordination log.
I noted everything,” Carol said.
She reached into her bag and slid a thin, worn notebook across the table.
It was frayed at the edges, the kind of wear that only comes from a book being carried every single day, like a talisman.
“I left the Foundation six days later.
My contract was terminated for ‘budget reasons.’ We both know that was a lie.”
Lily rested her hand on the notebook.
The leather felt cold and real.
She kept it, Lily thought, a sudden lump forming in her throat.
For two years, this stranger has been carrying the truth in her purse because she knew it mattered.
It was the first time in months Lily felt she wasn’t just screaming into a void.
Dad, someone saw, she thought, her fingers tracing the worn spine.
Someone didn’t look away.
Vote for my baby.
And gift her too