Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Emilia “Em” Rivera
I’d been awake since four in the morning.
Going home had been the right call — I’d known it even as I’d watched the Obsidian’s elevator doors close between us, even as I’d taken a cab back to Logan Square with the weight of Sebastian’s confessions sitting in my chest like something still settling.
He’d needed to make calls. I’d needed to think.
We’d both needed the space to process what the night had cracked open before we could figure out what to do with it.
What I hadn’t anticipated was that thinking would lead directly to Marco’s files, and Marco’s files would lead directly to four hours at my kitchen table with cold coffee and the growing certainty that this investigation was about to become something neither of us had fully prepared for.
The documents spread across the table told a story I hadn’t expected to find.
Marco had come through. The offshore account records he’d dug up painted Richard Hartley as exactly what Sebastian suspected: a puppet with expensive tastes and no loyalty.
Wire transfers to shell companies in the Caymans.
Payments that coincided perfectly with the substandard concrete deliveries to the Lakefront project.
A paper trail so damning it made my fingers itch for my keyboard.
But buried in the financial labyrinth was something else entirely. Something that made me sit back in my chair and stare at the water-stained ceiling of my apartment.
Sebastian Laurent wasn’t just innocent — he’d been hunting the corruption himself long before I walked into his world with accusations and a recorder. He’d been actively investigating it for months before I ever showed up at that gala with my righteous indignation and a voice recorder in my clutch.
“Damn it,” I muttered, shoving my hair back from my face.
My phone buzzed. Jenna, checking in for the third time since dawn.
You alive? Saw the news. Some blogger is running a hit piece about you and Billionaire McBroody.
I typed back quickly. Alive. Working. Will explain later.
That’s what you said yesterday. And the day before. I’m starting to think you’ve been kidnapped by expensive suits.
I almost smiled. Almost.
Victor’s threat from last night wasn’t just another reputational attack — it was personal. A photograph of his mother’s nursing home. A single line of text: Everyone has something to lose.
Sebastian had gone cold when he’d shown me the screen at The Obsidian. Not angry — cold. The kind of stillness that came from years of learning to mask every emotion, every weakness.
He’d sent me home and spent the night making calls. I’d come home and spent the night making my own kind of calls — to Marco, to my notes, to the financial records that were assembling themselves into a picture far larger than anything I’d originally imagined.
By the time Sebastian had tripled security at the nursing home and arranged for his mother to be moved to a private facility under a different name, I’d already been awake for hours with documents spread across every available surface.
And then he’d texted: I need you to stay out of this.
That was three hours ago. I hadn’t responded.
My phone rang — not a text this time. Sebastian’s name lit up the screen, and I let it ring once before answering. I’d promised him the morning. It was morning.
“I’m not staying out of this,” I said.
A pause. Then his voice, rough with exhaustion that twelve hours of calls couldn’t fix: “I know.”
“Good. Because I found something.”
“Em—”
“Richard Hartley has been funneling money to Victor Corsetti for three years. Not just kickbacks from the Lakefront project. We’re talking systematic embezzlement across multiple Laurent Enterprises subsidiaries.
” I flipped through the printed pages, my journalist brain cataloging details even as my chest did the complicated thing it always did at the sound of his voice.
“But here’s the thing, Sebastian. You already knew that, didn’t you? ”
Silence stretched between us.
“You’ve been building a case against your own CFO,” I said slowly, the realization settling in as the pieces aligned — my investigation and his had been circling the same truth from opposite sides all along. “Quietly. Without going public. Without involving law enforcement or the board.”
“Victor has people everywhere.” His voice was flat, controlled. “The police. The regulatory agencies. Even my own security team — I’ve had to vet them three times in the past year.”
“So you were going to handle it yourself.”
“I was going to protect my company and the people who work for it. The same way I’ve protected everything that matters since I was seventeen years old.”
I closed my eyes, remembering what he’d told me at The Obsidian. His father’s violence. His mother’s silence. The moment he’d finally fought back and discovered that power was the only currency that mattered in a world that respected nothing else.
“That’s not protection,” I said quietly. “That’s control.”
“Is there a difference?”
“Yes.” I stood, moving to the window where gray morning light was filtering through the curtains. “Protection means standing with someone. Control means standing in front of them and blocking their view.”
He didn’t respond immediately. I heard movement on his end — footsteps, a door closing, the particular quality of silence that meant he was somewhere private now.
“I have documents,” he finally said. “Evidence I’ve been compiling for months. Financial records, communications, witness statements from contractors who were pressured to use substandard materials.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“Because you were investigating me. Because I didn’t know if I could trust you. Because—” He stopped. Started again. “Because every person I’ve ever trusted with information has eventually used it against me.”
The admission hit me somewhere behind my ribs. Not because it was surprising — I’d sensed the walls around him since the beginning — but because he’d said it out loud. To me. After last night, the saying of it meant something different than it would have a week ago.
“I’m not them,” I said.
“I’m beginning to understand that.”
Outside my window, Chicago was waking up.
Cars crawling through morning traffic. Pedestrians hunched against the wind.
A city full of people who had no idea that Victor Corsetti was orchestrating a corporate war that could destroy thousands of jobs, tank a major development project, and ruin the reputation of the one man standing in his way.
“I want to see your evidence,” I said. “All of it. And I want to tell this story.”
“Em—”
“Not just the corruption angle. The whole story. Victor’s vendetta. Richard’s betrayal. Your investigation.” I turned from the window. “And you. Your past. Why you built this empire and what it cost you.”
The silence that followed felt different. Heavier. The silence of someone deciding something.
“You want to expose me.”
“I want to tell the truth.” I held the phone tighter. “That’s not the same thing.”
I thought about all the stories I’d written over the years. The corrupt politicians and shady developers and corporate executives who’d used their power to hurt people who couldn’t fight back. I’d made a career out of dragging their secrets into daylight.
But Sebastian wasn’t like them. He’d built his empire from violence and poverty, yes. He’d made compromises, cut corners, done things he wasn’t proud of. But he’d also created jobs, revitalized neighborhoods, given opportunities to people who reminded him of where he came from.
The truth about Sebastian Laurent was complicated. Messy. Human.
“You’re not a villain,” I said. “You’re not a hero either. You’re a man who learned that power was the only thing that could keep him safe, and you’ve spent your entire adult life proving that lesson right.”
“And what happens when I’m wrong?”
“Then you learn a new lesson.”
I heard him exhale — a sound that might have been frustration or relief or something in between that didn’t have a clean name.
“Come to my office,” he said. “Bring everything you have on Hartley. We’ll compare notes.”
“This isn’t a collaboration. I’m not writing a puff piece to make you look good.”
“I’m not asking you to. I’m asking you to help me destroy the man who’s threatening everyone I care about.” A beat. “What you write afterward is your decision.”
Everyone I care about. The words landed differently now than they would have a week ago. Differently even than they would have yesterday, before The Obsidian, before he’d pressed his lips to my temple and asked for one night.
“I’ll be there in an hour.”
I hung up before he could respond.
The shower was cold — my building’s ancient water heater had given up sometime around three AM — but it helped clear my head. I dressed quickly, pulling on jeans and a sweater, stuffing my notes and laptop into my messenger bag.
My phone buzzed again as I was locking my apartment door.
Unknown number. No caller ID. The timing tightened something in my chest — too precise, too convenient.
I answered anyway. “Rivera.”
“Miss Rivera.” The voice was cultured, older, carrying the faint trace of an accent I couldn’t place. “I understand you’ve been asking questions about Richard Hartley’s financial arrangements.”
My hand tightened on my phone. “Who is this?”
“A concerned party. One who wants to see the truth come out — but not at the cost of innocent lives.”
Victor Corsetti. It had to be.
“If you’re threatening me—”
“I don’t make threats, Miss Rivera. I make offers.
” A pause weighted with the particular patience of a man who had been waiting a long time for this conversation.
“You have information that could damage Sebastian Laurent’s empire.
I have information that could destroy it entirely.
Perhaps we could find an arrangement that benefits us both. ”
“I’m not interested in arrangements.”