All Chapters of The Switch: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

53 Chapters

The Big Reveal

ARIA'S POV I knew that voice. The flashlight lowered slightly for me to see the face behind it. I gasped in shock. My mother stood in the corridor of Lincoln High School. Margaret Chen. The corporate lawyer and perfect mother. She was still in her work suit and her hair was still perfect despite midnight, chaos and police lights outside. "Mom?" I sounded like a child, small, confused and completely unprepared. "What are you doing in here? You were outside with the police....." "I was." She walked toward me slowly. "And then I saw someone who shouldn't be here slip into the building through the gymnasium window. She stopped five feet away. "So I followed." "That was Cole......". I said. "I'm not talking about the Morrison boy." Her eyes were unreadable in the half light. "I'm talking about someone else i recognised that came in before him." My heart started pounding heavily. "Who?" "Someone I've been afraid of for fifteen years." She reached into her jacket pocket and gave

The Person Behind The Curtains

ARIA'S POV Terror gripped me as I tried hard to believe. "Then we have him....." "No. Because Richard Webb disappeared the night Cameron died with new identity and to a new country. For two years, nobody has known where he is." She looked past me into the darkness. "Until tonight. Because the person who came into this building before Cole......." She stopped. A figure stepped out of a classroom doorway twenty feet behind my mother. He was older than the photograph but unmistakably the same person. 'Richard Webb.' He stood in the corridor of Lincoln High School like he owned it. "Hello, Margaret," he said pleasantly. "It's been a long time." My mother turned slowly. Her spine straightened and her fear disappeared. "Richard." She gasped. "I heard your little confession just now. Very touching." He walked toward us unhurriedly. "Your daughter seems shocked. Did you really never tell her any of this?" He smiled. "Don't come any closer," my mother said raising her hand

Mother's Truth.

SAGE'S POV My mother's silence was surprising. I watched Aria's face as she tried to process what she had heard from the officer in shock. The moment the perfect, composed and always-prepared Aria Chen simply didn't know what to do. I'd never seen that look on her face before. "Mom." Aria said in a shaky voice. "Say something." Our mother opened her eyes, I saw the relief of someone who had been carrying something unbearable for so long that even being caught felt better. "Not here," our mother said quietly. "Not in a corridor with officers and cameras and......" "HERE." Aria raised her voice and it was nothing like the sister I thought I knew. "Right here and now. It's high time you stopped waiting for careful timing or deciding when the truth is convenient." She stepped toward our mother. "Did you call Richard Webb that night? Did you tell him Cameron would be on that roof?" Aria questioned, holding back tears. The officer beside us shifted uncomfortably. Two other officers

Blood And Lies

SAGE'S POV The emergency lights had stopped strobing. Somewhere outside, journalists were shouting questions at officers who aren't answering and somewhere in the building, our father was in a locker room with officers, waiting. Aria wiped her face with the back of her hand, took a deep breath and straightened. "We need to find Dad," she said. "Aria......" Cole started. "I know how bad what she did is." Aria's voice was controlled. "But right now we need everything on that drive before Richard Webb's lawyers start making it disappear." She looked at Cole. "For Cameron. Before anything else.." Cole looked at her for a long moment. "Yeah," he said quietly. "For Cameron." We found the locker room at the end of the east corridor. An officer was standing outside and he stepped aside when he saw us. Inside, our father sat on a bench between two officers. The fake bomb device has been removed, sitting harmlessly on the floor nearby. He looks smaller and older without it. He looke

Room 204

JULIAN'S POV The hallway outside my mother's room smelled like antiseptic. I've been sitting in this plastic chair for forty minutes, staring at the number on her door, 204. Victoria lied. She manufactured a crisis to break me, and it worked. I gave up and stopped fighting. I sat in that chapel and let grief hollow me out completely, all for a lie made by a girl. My mother was alive and I was sitting outside her room afraid to go in because what do I say? 'Hi Mom. Sorry I haven't visited in three weeks. I've been pretending to be a dead rich boy and falling in love with a girl who was pretending to be her twin sister and also someone might have murdered your husband and I've been living inside a web of lies so complicated I've forgotten what my real face looks like.' Yeah. That conversation needed work. My phone buzzed and it was Sage calling. I answered before the first ring finished. "Are you okay?" "Julian, listen to me carefully." Her voice was urgent. "Is anyone

What He Didn't Know

JULIAN'S POV "Arthur has known the partners Webb had worked with for years but he was afraid because one of them......" The voice dropped. "One of them is in law enforcement and he has been managing the investigation and he made sure Cameron's death was ruled suicide before anyone could look too closely." I felt a cold shiver run down my spine"Who?" "Someone who was at Lincoln High tonight with a badge" A breath. "Someone who just walked into Arthur Grayson's interview room alone with him five minutes ago." I was standing already moving toward the door. "What's Arthur's room number?" I asked even though I was already in the corridor. "I don't know. But Julian....." The voice sounded with urgency. "The people protecting Webb's network aren't all arrested. Some of them have been in the room with you all night and you didn't know it." Detective Reyes was thirty feet away talking to a nurse at the station. She looked up when she saw me coming. "What's wrong?" "Arthur Gra

The Contract

SAGE'S POV Richard Webb arranged Julian's entire life. I read the document over Julian's shoulder three times before the words stopped blurring together and started making sense. The arrangement that turned Julian Reeves into Julian St. Claire. The deal that gave his dying mother medical treatment in exchange for Julian pretending to be a dead rich boy. Richard Webb's signature was at the bottom as the one who designed the whole thing from scratch. "He built you," I said, quietly. Julian didn't respond. He was staring blankly at the document like if he looked long enough it'll change into something that made more sense. "Julian." "I heard you." He said harshly. I fidgeted. "He built me. Three years ago, Richard Webb approached my mother, offered her a deal for medical treatment for her illness, financial security and everything we needed." He scrolled through the document. "In exchange for placing me inside the St. Claire family and Ashford Academy. Inside a position o

Three Steps Ahead

ARIA'S POV Richard Webb was free for forty minutes and he already had a hostage. I stared at the photo of Arthur Grayson and the written note on my phone screen. The real game had just begun. "He planned the arrest and everything that happened last night," Cole said angrily. His voice was controlled though. "Huh?? you can't plan getting arrested," Julian replied. "You can if you can control what will happen after." Cole took my phone and studied the photo "Think about it. Webb got arrested last night and we all celebrated and all of a sudden his lawyer got him out by 5am through a compromised judge before everything was formally filed. Meanwhile he had already positioned himself as emergency board chair at Ashford through the contacts on the board who weren't arrested." Cole handed the phone back. "He allowed us to think we had won while everything he actually needed was already in place." He added. "But why?" Aria asked, in a puzzled face. "Why go through all of th

The Box

ARIA'S POV Arthur Grayson was sitting unhurt and alert in a room in that building, looking at the camera. He spoke. "Aria, Cole. I need you to hear this and I need you to believe me." His voice was steady. "Everything I gave you last night was real." He paused. "But Richard is right that it isn't the complete picture. There is something I held back because I didn't know if I could trust you with it." He leaned toward the camera. "Thomas Reeves, before he died, didn't just document Webb's pharmaceutical fraud. He documented older dangerous operations connected to people who made Webb look small. Another pause. "Thomas called it the Foundation. It's been operating for thirty years and Webb is part of it, but Webb is not the top." The video ended and my hands were cold around the phone. "The Foundation," Cole repeated. He was watching the video over my shoulder. "Cameron mentioned something I didn't understand in his notes. A charitable foundation." "It wasn't," I said. "It

The Video

SAGE'S POV The service door was locked like Victoria had said so we slipped inside First Connecticut Bank through the back entrance at 7:00 in the morning. "This is insane," Julian whispered. "Likeee", I frowned. We were already inside and far away from Reyes backup or safety. "Safety deposit boxes are in the basement," Cole said. He had gone to the building before to monitor, when he was investigating Cameron. "Let's go to the Vault room by the stairs at the end of this corridor." He gestured. My heart hammered as we moved quietly and quickly. Victoria's text said Webb was already inside which meant he was somewhere in the building, waiting. The stairs got darker as we went down and Cole used his phone flashlight so we could see. We saw a door that was closed but not locked and we exchanged glances. "Let's go together to see what's behind there."Aria said quietly. We all held hands and Cole pushed the door with his feet. The vault room was enormous with hundre

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