Truth Was Waiting
Melody stood motionless at the tall window of her room, arms wrapped loosely around herself against the chill that seeped through the glass.
Outside, the garden lay shrouded in night.
.. bare branches etched black against the indigo sky, frost glittering faintly under the moon.
The estate was silent except for the distant rustle of wind through the oaks.
She missed him.
Terribly.
The ache bloomed low in her chest, sudden and uninvited: the memory of Christian’s touch, soft whenever they were close, even when he hated her; the way his gaze had once lingered on her across crowded rooms before hate replaced wonder; the low timbre of his voice when he spoke her name like it was both curse and prayer.
She pressed her forehead to the cool pane.
Why?
She wasn’t supposed to miss him.
She was supposed to hate him... hate the man who had married her out of vengeance, who had let his mother and fiancée tear her apart, who had taken her daughter and called it justice. She was supposed to sharpen that hate into something lethal, something she could wield when the time came.
And yet here she was, heart twisting with a longing she couldn’t kill.
A sigh slipped from her lips, fogging the glass.
She turned away from the window and walked slowly to the bed, sinking onto the edge of the mattress. The room was warm, safe, luxurious... everything the Holt mansion had never been to her, but tonight it felt too quiet, too empty.
Melody stared at her hands in her lap, nails short and neat.
“Christian Holt,” she whispered to the dark, voice raw and steady at once, “you messed me up. You broke me in ways I’m still finding pieces of. And a part of me still loves you.”
She closed her eyes, tears slipping free and tracing silent paths down her cheeks.
“But that doesn’t mean I forgive you. It doesn’t mean I forget.”
She opened her eyes again, gaze hardening as she looked toward the crib that wasn’t here, the child who wasn’t in her arms.
“I will come for my daughter,” she said, voice low and fierce. “I will take her from you the way you took her from me. I will walk into your life again, not begging, not broken, but strong. And when I do, you will watch me leave with her. You will feel what I felt. Every single day.”
She wiped her tears with the heel of her hand, breathing in deep.
“I promise.”
The words hung in the quiet room like an oath.
Outside, the garden remained silent and veiled in night.
But inside Melody, something unbreakable had taken root.
Revenge.
Love.
Motherhood.
All three, twisted together, burning low and steady.
She lay back against the pillows, eyes fixed on the ceiling.
Sleep would come soon.
And when it did, she would dream... not of Christian’s touch, but of Symphony’s smile.
And of the day she would finally bring her daughter home.
×××××××
Christian woke with a start, sheets clinging to his sweat-damp skin, heart thudding against his ribs as though it had been running for hours.
The room was dark except for the faint silver light slipping between the curtains.
He sat up slowly, dragging a hand over his face, trying to shake the dream or memory that had clawed its way back to the surface.
Melody’s voice, quiet but razor-sharp, echoed in his skull the way it had that day in his office.
“He didn’t love me, Christian. He wanted to own me. He harassed me. Cornered me. Threatened me. Watched me in my own home.”
He exhaled roughly through his nose and swung his legs over the side of the bed. The floor was cold against his bare feet. He reached for the water glass on the nightstand, drank in long, unsteady gulps, then set it down too hard.
Tonight, for some reason, he didn’t want to push the words away.
He didn’t want to label them lies and lock them back in the box marked Ashton was innocent / Melody destroyed him / end of story.
He wanted to think the other way.
Just once.
Just to see if the pieces fit differently.
But how?
Melody had vanished.
No phone. No apartment. No trace. Marcus had come back empty-handed again and again. She had disappeared so completely it felt deliberate.
Christian stood, walked to the window, and stared out at the dark lawn. The mansion was silent, the city beyond it indifferent.
“I have to clear my doubts,” he murmured to the empty room, voice low and rough. “I have to know.”
×××××××
The next morning Christian sat at the head of the long conference table on the executive floor, sleeves rolled to his elbows, a half-finished blueprint of the new logistics hub spread out in front of him.
Three senior engineers leaned over the plans, voices low as they debated load-bearing capacities and delivery timelines.
The room smelled faintly of fresh coffee and whiteboard markers.
The door opened without a knock.
Marcus stepped inside, expression unreadable but urgent.
Christian looked up. His gaze sharpened instantly. He pushed his chair back and stood.
“That’s all for now,” he said to the room, voice clipped and final. “We’ll pick this up at 2 p.m. Send me your revised calcs by noon.”
The engineers exchanged quick glances but gathered their tablets and files without protest. They filed out, leaving the door open behind them.
Christian walked past Marcus without a word. Marcus followed, closing the conference-room door quietly.
They moved down the corridor in silence until they reached Christian’s private office. Christian stepped inside first, Marcus behind him. The door shut with a soft, definitive click.
Christian crossed to the floor-to-ceiling window and stood with his back to it, arms folded, looking at Marcus.
“Talk.”
Marcus leaned one hip against the edge of the desk, arms crossed in mirror of his boss.
“I checked the CCTV footage from the six months before Ashton died. Every hallway, every stairwell, every elevator bank. Nothing suspicious. No late-night meetings in empty offices. No arguments caught on camera. No signs of harassment, physical or otherwise. All clear.”
Christian’s jaw worked once.
“You think someone tampered with it?”
“It’s possible,” Marcus replied. “The archives are digital. Someone with admin access could have scrubbed segments, overwritten timestamps, even replaced feeds. But if they did, they were careful. No obvious gaps, no corrupted files. Just… nothing.”
Christian pursed his lips and turned to stare out the window. The city sprawled beneath him, gray, indifferent, endless.
“If Melody really was harassed,” he said slowly, “she would’ve gone to someone inside the company first. Before the police. She was methodical. She wouldn’t have jumped straight to an external complaint without trying HR.”
Marcus thought for a moment, then nodded.
“Complaints are submitted through the internal portal. The manager, Richard Kline, he reviews them personally. Always has.”
Christian’s gaze sharpened.
“Richard.” He spoke the name like he was tasting something bitter. “I remember Ashton used to give him bonuses. Big ones. I never understood why. Thought it was just… favoritism.”
Marcus’s eyes narrowed slightly.
“Could it be…?”
Christian bit the inside of his lip, staring at the skyline.
“Where is Richard now?”
“On vacation,” Marcus answered. “Two weeks in the Maldives. Left last Friday.”
Christian nodded once, decisive.
“Search his desk. Tonight. After hours. Get into his system... emails, archived complaints, deleted folders, everything. See what he’s been hiding.”
Marcus straightened.
“Understood.”
Christian turned fully to face him, voice dropping.
“And keep it confidential. No one hears about this. Not a single person in this building. If Richard buried complaints, if he helped Ashton cover his tracks, I want proof before I move.”
Marcus gave a single, sharp nod.
“I’ll handle it.”
He turned to leave.
Christian’s voice stopped him at the door.
“Marcus.”
Marcus paused, hand on the knob.
“If you find anything,” Christian said quietly, “anything at all… bring it to me first. No copies. No backups. Just me.”
Marcus met his gaze for a long second.
Then he nodded again.
“Got it.”
The door closed behind him.
Christian stood alone in the silence of his office, staring at the city that had once felt like his kingdom.
Now it felt like a maze.
And somewhere in that maze, the truth about Ashton and Melody was waiting.
He just had to be willing to tear it all down to find it.
×××××××
The Holt Enterprises building was a ghost town after 11 p.m. The executive floor lights had dimmed to emergency mode, soft blue strips along the baseboards, the occasional glow from a sleeping monitor. The air-conditioning hummed low, the only sound besides Marcus’s quiet footsteps on the carpet.
He moved quickly but without hurry, black hoodie zipped to the chin, gloves on, a slim leather pouch tucked against his side.
The security cameras on this floor looped every ninety minutes; he’d already slipped a small script into the system earlier that day, nothing flashy, just enough to replace the live feed with thirty minutes of empty hallway footage whenever he needed it.
Richard Kline’s office door was unlocked.
Of course it was.
HR managers never thought anyone would bother them after hours.
Marcus slipped inside and closed the door with the heel of his boot.
The room smelled faintly of stale coffee and printer toner.
Richard’s desk was obsessively neat: monitor off, keyboard aligned, single manila folder centered like a gravestone. Marcus didn’t touch the folder. He went straight for the tower under the desk.
He knelt, plugged in a small black USB drive pre-loaded with his toolkit, and powered the machine on in safe mode. The screen blinked to life, blue-white glow washing across his face. He typed fast, fingers flying across the keys.
Password prompt.
He smiled thinly.
Richard had used the same eight-character combination for his email, his expense portal, and his personal cloud backup three years ago. Marcus had peeked once three years ago.
The desktop loaded.
He opened the HR complaint portal first... internal server access granted through Richard’s credentials. Folders upon folders: Active Cases, Resolved, Archived – Confidential. He scrolled, eyes scanning dates and names.
Nothing from Melody’s time period.
He switched to the deleted-items recovery log.
Still nothing.
His jaw tightened.
He moved to the email archive, Richard’s personal inbox, not the company one. Thousands of messages. He filtered by sender: Ashton Holt.
Jackpot.
Dozens of emails... some casual, some clipped.
Subject lines that made Marcus’s stomach turn.
He didn’t read them yet.
He copied the entire folder to the USB drive, then moved to the hidden partition he’d spotted earlier, a 500 GB encrypted volume labeled Personal Backup.
He cracked the password in under four minutes.
Same pattern.
Same arrogance.
Inside: scanned complaint forms.
Audio recordings.
Screenshots of deleted portal entries.
And one folder simply named ME.
Marcus’s pulse kicked up.
He didn’t open it.
Not here.
He copied the entire partition, every byte, then wiped his access logs, restarted the machine in normal mode, and ejected the drive.
Thirty minutes after he’d started, he leaned back in Richard’s chair, face lit only by the screen’s cold glow.
His eyes twinkled with quiet victory.
“Fuck me,” he murmured to the empty room, lips curving. “I just hit the jackpot!”
He powered down the computer, pocketed the USB, and slipped out the way he came.
“Please, God. I need a raise. Or a bonus. Promotion. Anything for this... Nobel service,” he whispered on the way.
The hallway was still empty.
The cameras looped innocently.
And Marcus disappeared into the night with something explosive in his pocket... something he wouldn’t show Christian until he was absolutely sure what it contained.
Because whatever was inside that ME folder…
it was going to change everything.
×××××××