Chapter 5 - The Shadow Partner
I took Vanessa’s phone before the police could catalog it. In the chaos of the restaurant, no one noticed.
Back at my workshop, with Claire sleeping exhaustedly in the small living space upstairs, I connected Vanessa’s phone to my decryption rig.
The encrypted message was sent via an anonymous routing service, but the coding style of the encryption protocol was familiar. It was the same protocol used by Apex Realty, the parent company of the Sterling family’s real estate empire.
I bypassed the phone's lock screen and opened the messaging history.
What I found made my blood run cold.
Vanessa hadn't come up with the plan to forge the paternity test to get Claire's trust fund. She had been ordered to do it.
The contact was saved in her phone simply as "Architect."
Architect: "Daniel is getting too close to the project files. If he audits the construction accounts for the new luxury high-rise, he’ll find the structural deficiencies. We need him gone."
Vanessa: "How do I do that? Claire trusts him completely."
Architect: "Destroy his standing. If he's accused of paternity fraud, his reputation is ruined, Claire will divorce him, and we can use the custody battle to tie him up in court for years. He won't have the time or money to look at our books."
My mind raced.
I had been hired six months ago to do a routine digital audit of the Sterling Group’s construction division. I had pointed out a few minor accounting anomalies in the concrete procurement logs, but I hadn't dug deeper because Claire's pregnancy had become my main focus.
They weren't trying to protect a family trust. They were covering up a massive, illegal construction fraud scheme that could collapse their entire empire—and literally collapse a building.
I opened the contact details for "Architect." I traced the routing IP of the messages.
It didn't go to Lydia. It didn't go to Vanessa’s colleagues.
The IP address traced back to a penthouse apartment downtown owned by Thomas Sterling—Claire and Vanessa’s father, who had supposedly died in a boating accident five years ago.
My hands hovered over the keyboard.
Thomas Sterling was dead. His estate had been settled. Claire had wept at his empty casket.
How was a dead man sending encrypted messages to Vanessa?
I pulled up the police report from the boating accident. The body was never recovered. The boat had exploded off the coast, and he had been declared legally dead after a six-month search.
I looked at the timestamps of the messages. The most recent one had been sent ten minutes ago.
“She’s been arrested. Pack your things. The jet is ready.”
I grabbed my keys.
"Daniel?" Claire's voice came from the stairs. She was standing there, rubbing her eyes, looking fragile but awake. "Where are you going?"
May you like
I looked at her, debating whether to tell her the truth. But she deserved the truth. She had lived in a house of lies for too long.
"Claire," I said, walking over to her and taking her hands. "Your father is alive. And he’s trying to flee the country."
