LOGINTHE WITNESSBRIELLEIgnoring the obvious threat message, I pushed through the entrance and immediately felt cool air wash over me.The lobby was busy enough that nobody paid much attention to another person walking through the doors.Phones rang behind the reception. Elevators opened and closed in steady intervals. Conversations overlapped with the soft click of heels crossing polished floors.Everything looked the same.For months, I had moved through this building without giving it a second thought.I headed toward the reception.The woman behind the desk looked up from her monitor and recognition flashed across her face almost immediately.“Ms Arwen.”“Good evening.”“Good evening.”Her smile remained perfectly professional, but there was something guarded behind it that hadn’t been there before.I rested a hand lightly on the counter.“I was hoping you could help me with something.”“I can try.”The answer sounded harmless enough, but it already felt like the beginning of a refusa
Back in ItalyBrielleThe flight landed just after sunrise.By the time I stepped out of the airport, the sky had become that pale grey-blue shade that always seemed to come before a proper morning. The air felt different from New York’s, cleaner, cooler, carrying a familiarity I hadn’t expected to notice so quickly.I stood beside the curb for a moment with one hand wrapped around the handle of my suitcase, watching taxis pull in and out of the pickup lane while travellers hurried past me in every direction.The suspension from Marcello's company was still hanging over my head. Christopher was still dead. None of that had changed. And yet, despite everything, I had boarded a plane and come back anyway.Because sitting in New York waiting for phone calls and updates clearly wasn’t getting me anywhere.A taxi pulled up in front of me.The driver leaned across the passenger seat and lowered the window.“Taxi?”I nodded and loaded my suitcase into the back.The apartment looked exactly h
Back to Italy“You really need to stop barging into my office, Ms Brielle Arwen,” Thomas said without looking up when I walked in, his pen still moving steadily across the paper like my presence was just another part of the background noise he had learned to work through.I closed the door behind me, not gently enough to be careless and not hard enough to be aggressive, just enough to signal that I wasn’t planning on leaving quickly.“Good morning to you too,” I replied, and that finally earned me a look from him. It wasn’t friendly, it was tired, like he already knew I was about to drain his patience.“You didn’t schedule this,” he said.“I knocked,” I answered.He stopped writing at that, finally setting the pen down. “After you opened the door.”I gave a small shrug of apology. “I was impatient.”“That’s not new,” he muttered, already leaning back slightly in his chair as if preparing himself for whatever I had brought in with me.I stepped further into the office, taking in the fa
The GapBrielleThe email sat open on my laptop long after the call ended.I had already looked at the image more times than I could count, but my eyes kept returning to it anyway. It showed Christopher walking out of the building alive, caught in a single frozen frame. The timestamp in the corner read 18:42, clear enough to make the whole thing feel real in a way Thomas’s phone call never had.I zoomed in again.The image blurred briefly before sharpening. Christopher looked relaxed apart from the limping. He wasn’t rushing anywhere, and there was nothing nervous or distracted about the way he carried himself.One hand rested in his coat pocket while his head tilted slightly downward, as though he were reading something on his phone or thinking about where he needed to be next.Nothing about him looked like a man walking toward his death.I leaned back in my chair and rubbed at my eyes.The apartment was quiet. Alessia had disappeared into her room hours ago, and Camilla had gone out
The Last TimestampBrielle“Mommy, you’re cheating,” Alessia said.I looked up from the board and found her pointing at me from across the small table. I frowned a little, already tired of the accusation.“I am not cheating.”“You moved twice.”“I moved once.”“Twice.”“Once.”Camilla snorted into her mug, watching us like she was enjoying it more than she should.“I watched you do it Bri.”I stared at both of them for a second.Traitors.Alessia immediately grinned and pushed one of the game pieces forward with the confidence of someone who had already decided she was winning no matter what I said.For the first time in what felt like forever, I wasn’t thinking about investigations, suspensions, or Christopher. I was thinking about how a six-year-old had somehow become impossible to beat at board games.“Your turn,” Alessia said.I looked down at the board again, then back at her, narrowing my eyes slightly. “I’m starting to think you’re making up rules.”“That’s because you’re losin
Last ContactBrielleThe room didn’t change after Thomas said it, but I did. At least something inside me did, because “Christopher is dead” didn’t feel like information.It felt like something that hadn’t fully landed yet, like my brain was still waiting for another version of the sentence that would make it less impossible.But there wasn’t one. Just silence on his end and noise on mine.Alessia’s voice came in the background asking Camilla something about a cartoon, mixed with the faint sound of movement in the living room.I stood still, gripping the phone tighter. My mouth opened, but nothing came out at first because it didn’t feel real enough to respond to.Then I forced it.“…say that again.”My voice sounded flat and detached, like it didn’t belong to me.Thomas didn’t hesitate this time.“Christopher is dead.”There was no softness in how he said it. No pausing just finality.I closed my eyes for a second, not because I was emotional, but because my body needed something to
THE PIECES CLICKEDBrielleThe executive floor looked nothing like it had a week ago. People were everywhere.Secretaries or people I assumed were secretaries hurried down hallways carrying folders.Security moved in groups. Fresh flowers lined several reception areas, even though the previous ones
SPECIAL GUESTBrielleBy three in the morning, my eyes were burning.I should have gone to bed hours ago.Instead, I was sitting at the dining table with my laptop open, scrolling through page after page of information about Carissa De Ville.Most of it was useless, and I was back where I started f
CARISSA DE VILLEBrielleBy the time I got home, my shoulders felt like they were carrying bricks.The familiar apartment building came into view, and for the first time all day, I felt some of the tension leave my body.Just a little.I climbed the stairs and unlocked the door.The second it opene
THE DEMOTIONBrielleThe floor was cold.It crept through my palms the moment I hit the floor, taking the breath I didn’t even realise I was holding.For a second, I just… stayed there.Staring at the table legs.The polished shoes, the blur of expensive fabric and shocked faces.Then reality snapp




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