Chapter 2: The Crimson File
Chapter 2: The Crimson File
The kitchen of my father’s modest brick ranch house in East Atlanta smelled of stale coffee and old paper. It was the house I had grown up in, a place where the floorboards creaked in familiar rhythms. For the past six hours, since we had fled the Vale estate at midnight, the kitchen table had been completely covered in manila folders, printed bank statements, and grainy surveillance photographs.
My father sat under the harsh light of the overhead fluorescent fixture, his glasses sliding down his nose as he circled numbers in a red pen. I sat opposite him, wrapped in an old high school cardigan, my hands gripping a mug of black tea.
"I don't understand, Dad," I said, rubbing my temples. "If Alicia Monroe came to you six months ago, why didn't you go to the District Attorney? Why wait until tonight? Until my engagement party?"
My father sighed, a deep, exhausted sound that seemed to age him ten years. He set his pen down and looked at me with eyes that had seen too much of the city's underbelly. "Because six months ago, Claire, I didn't have proof. I only had the word of a terrified young woman who was hiding in a motel room on Highway 78. Alicia didn't just discover that Marcus was abusing her physically; she discovered the source of the Vale family fortune. Vale Holdings isn't a tech incubator, sweetheart. It’s a laundry machine."
My breath caught in my throat. "What do you mean?"
"Marcus Vale built his initial capital by processing offshore funds for cartel syndicates operating out of the Gulf," my father explained, tapping a thick financial ledger. "Alicia found the secondary set of books hidden within the server architecture of his primary software platform. When Marcus realized she knew, he didn't just threaten her—he used his connections in the city government to frame her for a seven-figure embezzlement scheme to destroy her credibility before she could blow the whistle."
"And where is she now?" I asked, a cold dread pooling in my stomach.
Dad looked down at the table, his jaw tightening. "Three months ago, the day after Marcus proposed to you, Alicia’s rental car was found abandoned near Lake Lanier. The police ruled it a missing person case, suspected suicide due to the stress of the impending embezzlement charges. But two weeks ago, an anonymous source within the medical examiner's office sent me a copy of the autopsy report they tried to bury. They found a body in the lake, Claire. It was her. And the internal injuries didn't match a drowning."
I pulled my knees up to my chest, a violent shiver running through me. The man I had shared a bed with, the man who had promised to love me forever, was a murderer. And I had been next in line to provide him with the perfect social shield—the daughter of a respected, retired cop, a legal professional whose clean reputation would validate his corporate image.
"He was using me," I whispered, tears finally stinging my eyes. "Every dinner, every charity gala, every time he introduced me to his business partners... it was all just a performance to show the world he was a legitimate businessman."
"He was using you to insulate himself, yes," Dad said gently, reaching across the table to squeeze my hand. "But he made a mistake, Claire. He let you into his office. He gave you access to his personal legal files because he thought you were too blinded by the lifestyle to notice the discrepancies."
I froze, my mind racing back to three weeks ago. Marcus had asked me to review a series of non-disclosure agreements for a new commercial acquisition in Savannah. I had noticed a recurring parent company listed in the fine print—Aethelgard LLC, registered in Panama. At the time, I had dismissed it as standard corporate tax sheltering.
"Aethelgard," I muttered, standing up so fast my chair nearly toppled. "Dad, Aethelgard LLC isn't just a tax shelter. Marcus had me sign a notary witness form for a wire transfer from that specific entity last Tuesday. He told me it was a retainer fee for his maritime logistics expansion."
"Where are those copies, Claire?" my father asked, his eyes suddenly blaring with the sharp instinct of a detective who had just found his smoking gun.
"They're on my personal laptop," I said, panic rising in my voice. "But my laptop is still at the penthouse. In the master bedroom suite."
Before my father could reply, the sudden, high-pitched wail of a car alarm cut through the quiet suburban night. It was coming from the driveway.
We sprinted to the front window, pulling back the heavy curtains. Outside, under the amber glow of the streetlamp, a sleek, black SUV was parked idling at the edge of our lawn. A man in a dark hoodie stood near my father’s sedan, a crowbar in his hand, having just smashed the driver's side window.
As soon as he saw our faces in the window, the man didn't run. He calmly walked back to the passenger side of the SUV, slid inside, and the vehicle tore down the street, its tires screeching against the asphalt.
My phone vibrated in my cardigan pocket. It was an unknown number. With shaking fingers, I slid the screen to answer.
May you like
"I told you that your father started something he couldn't finish, Claire," Marcus’s voice came through the line, cold, rhythmic, and entirely devoid of human emotion. "The penthouse locks have been changed. Your things have been disposed of. If you or your father present that ridiculous photograph to anyone else, the next thing that disappears won't be a laptop. It will be your mother's pension, your father's reputation, and eventually, the both of you. Stay in your lane, little girl."
The line went dead, leaving only the sound of the wind whistling through the broken glass of my father's car outside—a clear declaration of war.
