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chapter 273

Author: Deedson
last update publish date: 2026-09-29 03:57:40

POV: Hazel

"You want me to remember the worst night of my life," I said, my throat burning, "and use it like a key. Do you have any idea what you are asking me to open, Penelope?"

"Yes," Penelope whispered. "That is why I chose it."

I sat down at the small glass table and placed Penelope's phone in front of me. The login screen waited with its blinking cursor, patient and cruel. Two tries. Only two.

Julian crouched beside my chair. His hand hovered near mine but did not touch it, as if he knew
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  • RECLAIMING MY LIFE FROM THE UNTOUCHABLE CEO    chapter 285

    POV: Hazel"Everyone stop talking and listen," Robert said, tapping the whiteboard with a marker. "If we lose one piece of this tonight, Penelope walks free and Julian carries the whole thing alone. Hazel, you start. What do we really have?"It was nearly two in the morning in Reyes's private office. Cold coffee sat in paper cups on every surface. A young technician named Pike hunched over a laptop in the corner, headphones around his neck. On the whiteboard, someone had drawn six empty boxes and numbered them. I stood in front of them the way I used to stand in front of a mirror before a hard routine. Count it out. Do one step at a time."Piece one," I said. "The Row F recording. Fifteen minutes long. We have only heard three. It proves Vincent and Madame Voss planned the accident. It does not say who gave the orders."Robert wrote it down. "Two?""Samuel's notebook," Diane said. She sat curled in a chair with a blanket around her shoulders. "Sixty eight pages of payments. It proves

  • RECLAIMING MY LIFE FROM THE UNTOUCHABLE CEO    chapter 284

    POV: Hazel"You paid me for five years, Julian," I said, and I laid the thick envelope between us like a knife. "Say the number out loud. Tell me what my loyalty cost. I want to hear what I was worth."It was past nine at night, and the kitchen was too bright. A kettle ticked on the stove as it cooled. The envelope had come from his lawyer weeks ago, and I had never opened it until tonight. Inside, under a gold clip, was a single page. At the bottom, in neat black type, stood a line that read compensation for five years of service. The number beside it had too many zeros.Julian stood on the other side of the counter in his shirt sleeves, tie gone, hair untidy. He looked at the page, then at me. "I wrote it because I did not know how to say I am sorry in any other language.""In money.""In the only language I was ever taught.""I am not a bill, Julian." My voice shook, and I let it. "I am not a debt you settle so you can sleep. Do you know what that page says to me? It says the last

  • RECLAIMING MY LIFE FROM THE UNTOUCHABLE CEO    chapter 283

    POV: Hazel"Do not step on the third stair," I said, and my own voice sounded like a stranger's. "It always squeaked. And once, during my final bow, I heard someone breathing behind that wall. I never told anyone. I thought I imagined it."Reyes stopped with one boot in the air. Behind me, Julian and Robert held their flashlights steady. The Alder Theater smelled exactly as it always had, of dust and rosin and old red velvet. Gray morning light leaked through the high windows. On the bare stage the ghost light stood in its wire cage, one yellow bulb humming to itself like a lonely song.Robert glanced at the empty seats rising into the dark. "It feels like a church," he said."It was one for me," I answered. "I confessed everything I had to this floor.""Did it ever answer you?""Once," I said. "On my last night, it felt like it was holding its breath."I had not stood in this place since the night of the accident. My feet remembered every board. The creak by the piano on the left. Th

  • RECLAIMING MY LIFE FROM THE UNTOUCHABLE CEO    chapter 282

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  • RECLAIMING MY LIFE FROM THE UNTOUCHABLE CEO    chapter 281

    POV: Hazel"You are supposed to be dead," Julian said, and his voice shook so hard that the glass walls seemed to hum. "I read your funeral notice. I paid for your gravestone. So tell me who is buried under it, because it is either you or every paper I ever signed."Samuel Grady did not lift his eyes. Rain dripped from his torn brown jacket onto the white marble, one slow drop after another, and each drop sounded like a ticking clock. He was bigger than I remembered from the photographs the police once showed me. But he stood like a man who had been folded up and kept in a drawer for years."The grave is empty, Mr. Daniel," he said. His voice scraped like gravel in a tin cup. "Nobody is buried there. I never died. I was hidden.""Hidden by whom?" Reyes asked."By me," Madame Voss said softly, and every head in the room turned toward her.I stared at her. "You hid him?""For five years," she said. "In a fishing town, two hundred miles north. I paid his rent. I carried his groceries. I

  • RECLAIMING MY LIFE FROM THE UNTOUCHABLE CEO    chapter 280

    POV: Hazel"You let us find it," I repeated, and the words felt like ice water poured down my back. "That is not possible. We fought for every piece of proof tonight.""Did you?" Vincent asked. He walked slowly toward the glass wall, hands behind his back, watching the pale dawn creep across the skyline. "I could have deleted that cloud account any time in five years. I knew it existed. I knew the password. I chose to leave it.""Why would you do that?" Julian demanded."Because a man in my position never keeps only one door," Vincent said. "And someone needed to win tonight. Someone I could use later."Security guards were already moving toward him, two large men in gray jackets, but Reyes waved them back with a look. "Let him talk," Reyes muttered. "I want every word.""You think I am afraid," Vincent said, and he turned to face us. "You think I am the villain at the end of your story. But I am only a man who has carried a secret longer than any of you. And tonight, Hazel, you have

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