Chapter Eighteen #2
She turned, and this time I didn’t let her go. I stood, crossed the room in three strides, and caught her hand.
“Eliza-” I started.
She didn’t pull away. She squeezed, once, as if to remind me she was real and not some equation to be solved.
“I know, Gabriel,” she said, softer now. “But next time? Let me help you. I hate feeling useless.”
“You’re not,” I said, and meant it.
She left, and I let her. Maybe that was what loving her was: not the chase, not the conquest, but the discipline to wait for the moment she needed me.
I sat in my empty office and watched the city flicker, thinking of how easy it was to destroy things, and how impossibly hard to build them back.
The email arrived at 3 a.m. because that’s when certain cowards preferred to operate.
Subject: “Urgent—Immediate Attention Required.” The attachment was a compressed folder, password-protected but barely disguised. I ran a sandbox scan before opening it; no malware, just two high-res photos and a single paragraph of text.
The photos were timestamped from the night we’d shared here in the office. Explicit, loaded, obvious. The message was not subtle.
“Certain activities violate the firm’s Code of Conduct. I am prepared to disclose these indiscretions to the board and media unless you resign within 72 hours. Consider your options carefully.”
No signature. No demand for money, just the surgical threat of exposure.
I didn’t bother to panic. The firm had handled worse, and I’d been built for this kind of warfare. But the idea of Eliza, her name, her reputation, dragged through the gutter by some second-string sloppy blackmailer made my skin prickle.
I screenshotted the message, encrypted the full thread, and forwarded it to our head of Legal. “Handle this quietly,” I wrote. “No further action until I say so.”
Then I got to work. Whoever sent this thought they were invisible.
They weren’t. I started with the header, working backward through each relay and IP hop.
The sender used a proton mail account and two Tor bridges, but the pattern was sloppy.
In three hours, I had an approximate geolocation for the device used; a rented apartment less than six miles from our main office.
Amateur hour.
By noon, Legal replied: the blackmailer had also sent hard copies to the homes of three board members. The packets contained the same photos and a printout of the original message. Sloppy again; each envelope sealed with a generic label, the return address a non-existent mailbox in Midtown.
I called the board chair, preempting the scandal. He was already half-spun from the tipoff, but I shut him down with one sentence: “We’ll contain it. No need to escalate.”
“Is it true?” he asked.
“It’s being handled,” I said. “There will be no fallout.”
He grunted, satisfied. For now.
I considered telling Eliza. She had the right to know, and she’d probably never forgive me if I kept this from her. But the mere thought of her reading that email, seeing those photos, tipped the balance. She’d gone through enough. I’d protect her from this, even if it cost me everything.
By 6:00 p.m., I had a suspect: an ex-analyst, quietly terminated last year after a failed embezzlement scheme. He’d left with a grudge and, apparently, a handful of old network credentials that Whitfield must have neglected to purge.
I tracked the guy’s movements: Uber receipts, a trail of coffee shop logins. I could have called the police, but that was never my style. I wanted the confrontation personal. Face to face.
After an hour later, I slipped out the back entrance, crossed three blocks, and waited outside the rat’s apartment complex. The hallway smelled like burnt hair and bleach. I knocked twice. He opened the door just enough to show his panic.
“Valor-? I-”
I didn’t let him finish. I pushed past, pinned him against the wall, and showed him the email on my phone.
“Delete everything,” I said. “All copies, all backups. Right now.”
He shook. “I - look, I just wanted-”
“-To destroy someone. Fine. But you picked the wrong target.”
He tried to protest, but I squeezed his shoulder, hard.
“If even one file resurfaces, I’ll make sure your next job is shoveling sewer lines in Antarctica. Do you understand?”
He nodded, wild-eyed, and fumbled for his laptop. I watched as he wiped the drives and deleted every backup from his cloud. I made him write a confession, timestamped and emailed to me, admitting he’d fabricated the chain of evidence. I’d have it in my back pocket, just in case.
When I left, I felt nothing. Not relief, not anger. Just a cold, clinical satisfaction.
I texted the head of Legal, “It’s over. Destroy the originals.”
She responded, “Will do. Should we notify the other party?”
I stared at the phone, thumb hovering. Then: “No. Not unless it becomes necessary.”
Eliza would never know. Not about the threat, not about the cost. That was how it had to be.
And if the world burned down around me, at least she’d walk away unscathed.
By Monday morning, the firm was an airtight container: every leak plugged, every possible witness under NDA.
I spent the first four hours locked in a conference room with Legal, drilling through our exposure scenarios.
They threw terms like “reputational risk” and “optics,” as if shame were just a liability to be amortized.
I kept my voice level. “We need to be ready for every possibility. If the story hits, we control the narrative. We do not sacrifice anyone, least of all Eliza Reeves.”
One of the lawyers, a thin woman with a diamond cartilage piercing, pushed up her glasses and said, “Are you certain she’s not aware of the risk?”
“She doesn’t have to know yet.” I said it with finality and watched them all jot it down.
For the next hour, I spun out plans within plans.
If the photos leaked, we’d allege fabrication and produce the blackmailer’s confession.
If it came to depositions, we’d settle out of court with ironclad NDAs.
Eliza’s name would never surface, and if it did, I’d bury it so deep nobody would find it.
But even as I mapped out the chessboard, I knew I was playing on borrowed time.
After the meeting, I returned to my office. The hallway was silent, too silent, no click of heels, no distant music from Eliza’s office. I texted her, once, under the pretense of a “status check.” She didn’t reply.
A junior analyst stuck his head in my door. “Ms. Reeves called in sick,” he said, voice tight.
That had never happened before. Not once in the decade I’d known her.
The rest of the day, I couldn’t focus. Every piece of paper on my desk blurred together, every incoming message felt like a threat. When the phone rang, I jumped. It was never her.
By sunset, the city outside was a smear of headlights and haze. I scanned the office again; empty, deserted. Eliza’s desk was untouched, the flowers wilted but still standing.
The unease sharpened. I paced the corridor, pausing at her door. I nearly knocked, but there was nobody inside to answer.
Back in my office, I pulled up the security feeds. She hadn’t been in all day. The last footage was from Friday night, her, striding out with her usual purpose, but her eyes hollow.
I called her cell. Voicemail. I didn’t leave a message. What would I even say? “I kept you in the dark for your own good”? “I engineered a coverup so you’d never have to defend yourself from something that shouldn’t matter”? The words withered before I could voice them.
I sat at my desk, waiting. For what, I wasn’t sure. And an anonymous text flashed on my screen: You can’t hide this from her forever.
No sender. No context. It didn’t matter.
I deleted it, but the message was already in my bones.
I looked at the empty hallway, felt the cold echo of her absence, and realized I hadn’t protected her at all.
I’d only succeeded in shutting her out.