POV: VIVIAN HALEI hate corporate politics. I hate meetings where people say a lot without saying anything. I hate that I have to fake-smile at men who think they built this company, when every inch of it is Kaia’s blood. But today? Today I hate something else more.I hate liars who look you in the face and call it loyalty.I’ve been working the same angle all week. Subtle check-ins, late-night phone calls masked as “compliance questions,” the kind of fake-casual probing that makes even seasoned execs sweat behind their teeth-whitened smiles. Kaia didn’t want a witch hunt—just the truth. But truth doesn’t come clean in places like this. It comes soaked in layers.And tonight, sitting at my desk at the edge of midnight, I think I’ve peeled back enough.I hit send on the last email. I stare at the list I’ve compiled. Only one name is circled in red.I say it out loud, just to hear how it lands.“Reed.”“Kaia,” I say the second I walk into her office, even though the lights are low and s
POV: VIVIAN HALEI hate corporate politics. I hate meetings where people say a lot without saying anything. I hate that I have to fake-smile at men who think they built this company, when every inch of it is Kaia’s blood. But today? Today I hate something else more.I hate liars who look you in the face and call it loyalty.I’ve been working the same angle all week. Subtle check-ins, late-night phone calls masked as “compliance questions,” the kind of fake-casual probing that makes even seasoned execs sweat behind their teeth-whitened smiles. Kaia didn’t want a witch hunt—just the truth. But truth doesn’t come clean in places like this. It comes soaked in layers.And tonight, sitting at my desk at the edge of midnight, I think I’ve peeled back enough.I hit send on the last email. I stare at the list I’ve compiled. Only one name is circled in red.I say it out loud, just to hear how it lands.“Reed.”“Kaia,” I say the second I walk into her office, even though the lights are low and s
POV: VIVIAN HALEI hate corporate politics. I hate meetings where people say a lot without saying anything. I hate that I have to fake-smile at men who think they built this company, when every inch of it is Kaia’s blood. But today? Today I hate something else more.I hate liars who look you in the face and call it loyalty.I’ve been working the same angle all week. Subtle check-ins, late-night phone calls masked as “compliance questions,” the kind of fake-casual probing that makes even seasoned execs sweat behind their teeth-whitened smiles. Kaia didn’t want a witch hunt—just the truth. But truth doesn’t come clean in places like this. It comes soaked in layers.And tonight, sitting at my desk at the edge of midnight, I think I’ve peeled back enough.I hit send on the last email. I stare at the list I’ve compiled. Only one name is circled in red.I say it out loud, just to hear how it lands.“Reed.”“Kaia,” I say the second I walk into her office, even though the lights are low and s
POV: VIVIAN HALEI hate corporate politics. I hate meetings where people say a lot without saying anything. I hate that I have to fake-smile at men who think they built this company, when every inch of it is Kaia’s blood. But today? Today I hate something else more.I hate liars who look you in the face and call it loyalty.I’ve been working the same angle all week. Subtle check-ins, late-night phone calls masked as “compliance questions,” the kind of fake-casual probing that makes even seasoned execs sweat behind their teeth-whitened smiles. Kaia didn’t want a witch hunt—just the truth. But truth doesn’t come clean in places like this. It comes soaked in layers.And tonight, sitting at my desk at the edge of midnight, I think I’ve peeled back enough.I hit send on the last email. I stare at the list I’ve compiled. Only one name is circled in red.I say it out loud, just to hear how it lands.“Reed.”“Kaia,” I say the second I walk into her office, even though the lights are low and s
POV: KAIA (ALINA)I don’t flinch when the first message comes in.I’ve trained myself not to. Learned how to sit still when the ground beneath me shifts. Even now, with the Ashen skyline pouring in through my penthouse windows like silver smoke, I don’t move. I just tilt my head slightly, eyes fixed on the blinking notification—no sender name. No subject. Just a blinking dot, like someone watching.Encrypted, of course. Too clean to be random.I enter the passkey without a second thought. It’s a code I haven’t used since I was Alina Rivers—back when I still believed people would fight fair if you gave them the truth.The file opens.At first it looks like a spreadsheet. Legal names. Meeting timestamps. Advisor clearances. Then I see the pattern, just like Sasha wanted me to.Someone in Ashen’s own advisory team has been leaking—access logs show patterns that don’t add up. Confidential files opened hours before closed boardroom discussions. Email reroutes. Cross-referenced financial au
POV: DETECTIVE ARLEN KADEI’m not supposed to care this much.I keep telling myself that as I drive through this part of the city I usually avoid—old money, stone fences, families with lawyers on retainer. The kind of people who can afford to bury a girl’s life and make it look like grief.But here I am, again. Off-book. Following a case that was never mine to begin with.Alina Rivers.I’ve read the file so many times it’s embedded in my skull. I could recite her autopsy report word for word, which is ironic considering there was never a body. Just an assumption. A suicide note that conveniently disappeared. A grieving husband who moved on too fast. A mother-in-law too composed. A falsified hit-and-run that’s beginning to smell like rot.And now? Now noise about her gas stets up again. Griggs won’t return my calls. And there’s Kaia.The woman with Alina’s eyes.The deeper I go, the harder it is to ignore the smell of cover-up.I pull up to a quiet street, windows tinted, plates clean.