Chapter 4 - The Archive
The glowing red screen cast a sinister shadow across my tiny office.
"Your mother is dead," Dominic stated, his voice devoid of any emotion.
"She died in a car accident fifteen years ago," I confirmed, my hands trembling over the keyboard.
"Then who exactly just used her name to steal ten million dollars from the Russian mafia?" he demanded.
I frantically typed in a series of backdoor commands I had written years ago to monitor company theft.
"The transfer was initiated from a computer terminal located inside this very building," I realized, the blood draining from my face.
"Specifically, from the basement archive room."
Dominic instantly drew his weapon and moved toward the doorway.
"Stay behind me," he ordered.
We crept silently through the dark, empty corridors of the shipping company I had essentially run for a decade.
The building was supposed to be completely deserted at this hour.
We reached the heavy metal door of the basement archive, which was slightly ajar.
A faint, flickering light spilled out into the dark hallway.
Dominic kicked the door open and swept into the room, his gun raised and ready to fire.
I followed closely behind him, my heart hammering violently in my chest.
The archive room was completely empty of people.
But sitting on a dusty wooden desk was a sleek, silver laptop that definitely did not belong to the company.
The screen displayed a completed transfer receipt for the ten million dollars.
Next to the laptop was a single, fresh white lily.
My breath caught in my throat.
White lilies were my mother's absolute favorite flower, the exact flowers my father had banned from the house after her funeral.
"Someone is playing a very dangerous game with you," Dominic observed, lowering his weapon slightly.
I walked over to the desk and noticed a small, leather-bound journal sitting beneath the laptop.
I recognized the worn cover immediately.
It was my mother's handwriting on the front label.
I opened the journal, expecting to find old grocery lists or personal diary entries.
Instead, the pages were filled with complex shipping coordinates, offshore bank account numbers, and detailed smuggling routes.
"My mother wasn't just a housewife," I whispered, staring at the undeniable proof.
"She was the original architect of the smuggling routes your father used," Dominic revealed quietly.
I spun around to face him, completely stunned by his words.
"You knew her?" I asked.
"My father worked with her before they were both murdered," Dominic said, his jaw clenching tightly.
"Your mother didn't die in an accident, Claire."
He stepped closer, his imposing presence filling the small, dusty space.
"She was assassinated because she tried to shut down the illegal weapon shipments."
Before I could even process the massive revelation that my entire life was a lie, a blinding spotlight flooded the archive room through the high basement windows.
The deafening sound of a helicopter rotor beat against the building.
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"Get down!" Dominic roared, tackling me violently to the concrete floor.
A split second later, a hail of high-caliber machine gun fire completely shredded the basement windows, tearing the archive room to absolute pieces.
