Chapter 48 Morgan
Morgan
Sleep didn’t come. Even after Ruby’s breathing steadied into the rhythm of dreams, I lay awake, staring at the ceiling, my heart still pounding with adrenaline.
By the time dawn cracked pale light across the curtains, I was back at my desk, coffee cooling beside me, recorder propped where it always sat.
I pulled up the files I’d been digging through for weeks. Shipping manifests, old property records, coded transfers hidden inside bland reports. At first glance, it was nothing but noise. But I’d trained myself to see patterns where others didn’t.
And there it was again.
The same company name is buried in three different files. Harmless on its own, but paired with the dates and locations, it painted a trail. A shipment routed through the docks, then vanished. A rental truck is tied to the same address. And now, the mill where I’d been.
I leaned closer, my stomach tightening. This wasn’t random. It was a pipeline. And someone was hiding it in plain sight.
My recorder clicked on as if by instinct.
“Note: the shell company is acting as cover. Trail crosses through warehouses at the docks, industrial parks on the edge of the city, and possibly farm storage units inland. Whoever’s running this knows how to make the trail look broken—but it isn’t. It’s one chain.”
The words tumbled out faster as the picture sharpened in my mind.
And then my cursor froze.
Because another name had just popped up, buried in one of the property deeds. A name I knew. A name that didn’t belong.
My pulse spiked. If I was right, this wasn’t just Luthor. This was someone with ties deeper than we’d guessed.
I snapped the recorder off, staring at the screen as fear clawed up my spine.
Damian had promised he’d come back when it was over. But what if what I’d just uncovered meant over was a lot further away than any of us thought?
I swallowed hard and whispered to the empty room, “What have I gotten us into?”