CHAPTER 7 — The Man Behind the Curtain
At 5:43 a.m., Ethan Carter stood alone in the underground archive, staring at the leather notebook that had already destroyed too many lives.
Seven people had seen it.
By sunrise...
only five were still alive.
One attorney had died in what police called a highway accident.
A forensic accountant had supposedly suffered a fatal gas leak in his apartment.
The timing was too perfect.
This wasn't coincidence.
It was cleanup.
Someone was erasing every person who came close to the truth.
"Seal the building," Ethan ordered.
"No one enters."
"No one leaves."
Corporate headquarters instantly went into lockdown.
Employees looked around in confusion as security officers quietly locked every entrance.
Rumors spread faster than emails.
Another arrest?
Another audit?
Nobody imagined the company's owner believed there was already a killer inside the building.
Across the city, Mara hadn't slept.
The anonymous threats.
Daniel's sudden death.
Her erased employee records.
Nothing made sense anymore.
She kept replaying one sentence in her mind.
The mastermind doesn't exist.
No...
Someone wanted people to believe that.
While organizing Evelyn Harper's notebook, a folded photograph slipped from between two pages.
She froze.
The picture had been taken twenty-eight years earlier.
Five young executives stood in front of a construction site, smiling proudly beside a sign that read:
FOUNDERS OF CARTER GLOBAL HOLDINGS
Mara immediately recognized one face.
A much younger Ethan's father.
Then another.
Daniel Whitmore.
But the third face made her blood run cold.
She had seen him before.
Yesterday.
Walking through Ellis headquarters.
She grabbed the employee directory.
The man's name was...
Harold Pierce.
Official title:
Building Maintenance Supervisor.
Forty years with the company.
Invisible.
Ignored.
Forgotten.
When Ethan received Mara's call, he interrupted her after only three sentences.
"Stay where you are."
"Why?"
"Because Harold retired eleven years ago."
Silence.
Mara slowly turned toward the hallway outside Records Management.
An elderly janitor pushed a cleaning cart toward her.
Gray hair.
Blue uniform.
Kind smile.
Exactly like the photograph...
Only older.
He looked directly into her eyes.
Then smiled.
"I hoped it would take you a little longer."
Mara's heart stopped.
She ran.
The hallway exploded into chaos.
The janitor abandoned the cart and sprinted after her with surprising speed.
He wasn't an old man anymore.
He moved like someone who had spent a lifetime training for moments exactly like this.
Mara darted into the stairwell.
The emergency door slammed behind her.
Footsteps echoed above.
Then below.
He was cutting her off.
"Ethan!"
She shouted into her phone while racing down the stairs.
"It's Harold!"
"No."
Ethan's voice turned ice cold.
"It's not."
"What?"
"The real Harold Pierce died in 2015."
Mara froze for half a second.
"If that's impossible..."
"It means whoever is chasing you has been living under another man's identity for eleven years."
The stairwell door burst open.
The fake janitor stepped inside.
He wasn't smiling anymore.
He calmly removed the gray wig.
Then peeled away the latex wrinkles from his face.
Standing before Mara wasn't an old maintenance worker.
It was a man in his early fifties with piercing green eyes and the expression of someone who had never lost a hunt.
"My name," he said quietly,
"...is Victor Kane."
"You've been looking for me."
He reached into his jacket.
Mara expected a gun.
Instead...
He removed a faded photograph.
It showed a little girl sitting on her father's shoulders during a company picnic.
The girl was unmistakably Mara.
Her father was laughing.
Victor handed her the photo.
"You deserve to know the truth."
"My father died in a car accident."
Victor slowly shook his head.
"No."
"He was murdered."
Every sound around Mara disappeared.
"What did you say?"
"Your father didn't steal company money."
"He tried to expose us."
Mara's hands trembled violently.
"No..."
"They killed him because he refused to join them."
Victor looked almost sympathetic.
"And now..."
"...history is repeating itself."
Before Mara could ask another question—
A gunshot echoed through the stairwell.
Victor spun sideways.
The bullet shattered the concrete wall inches from his head.
Another shot.
Then another.
Victor grabbed Mara's arm.
"They found us."
"Who?"
Victor looked toward the upper landing where black-clad gunmen were already rushing down the stairs.
His answer chilled her to the bone.
"The people who hired me."
Mara stared at him in disbelief.
"You work for them!"
"Not anymore."
He pulled a pistol from beneath his jacket and fired back.
The stairwell erupted into deafening chaos.
As bullets ricocheted around them, Victor shoved Mara behind the concrete wall.
"If you want to know who really controls Carter Global..."
"...you have exactly one chance to stay alive."
Then he spoke a name.
Just one name.
A name so impossible...
...that when Ethan heard it through Mara's still-open phone, the color drained from his face.
May you like
Because the mastermind behind everything...
...was someone Ethan had buried with his own hands fifteen years earlier.
