And Eleanor’s face, cold and calculating. They all wanted me to disappear. To give up.
Some to prison. Some to another city. They all wanted to break me and throw me away.
And in that moment something clicked inside me, finely and irrevocably. I slowly, demonstrably began to gather the photographs and documents back into the folder. The district attorney watched me, not understanding.
«What are you doing?» He asked. «I agreed.» I fastened the folder and held it in my hands.
I looked straight into Chambers’ eyes. «No,» I said. My voice was quiet, but firm as steel.
«I won’t trade.» I turned and walked toward the door. «Wait!» He yelled after me.
«What are you going to do?» I stopped at the door but did not turn around. «I’m going to take everything back. My apartment, my job, my name. And you, your future son-in-law, and your daughter will pay for everything.»
I walked out of the office, leaving the stunned district attorney behind me. I walked past the reception, past security, and stepped out onto the street. I didn’t go to the car where Darius was waiting.
I walked in the opposite direction. I left everyone behind. My tormentor, my traitor sister, my puppet master.
From this moment on, I was playing for myself. I walked down the street without a destination. The wind whipped my face, but I didn’t feel the cold.
Everything inside me was burning. The decision I had made in the district attorney’s office wasn’t impulsive. It had been growing in me all these days as my world crumbled.
First, I wanted justice. Then, survival. Now, I wanted retribution.
Complete and final. I reached the first cheap coffee shop I saw, sat at a table by the window, and took out my phone.
The wad of cash Leo had given me for expenses was in my pocket. I ordered the strongest coffee and dialed his number. «Leo, it’s Naomi. We need to meet right now.»
He arrived twenty minutes later, as always, in his worn jacket and smelling of tobacco. He sat down opposite me and looked at me questioningly. «Well, what did Vance say about your little late-night discovery?»
«She confirmed everything,» I answered in a level voice. «She was playing her game and offered me a deal. Give up the district attorney in exchange for my freedom and leaving the city.»
Leo whistled. «Now that’s a turn of events, but that’s a way out for you. Unfair, of course, that they’d take the apartment, but you’d be free.»
«I refused,» I said. Leo choked on his coffee. He stared at me as if I were crazy.
«You refused? Are you in your right mind, Sterling? That was your only chance.»
«It was her chance,» I corrected him. «A chance for her to finish her revenge and toss me away like a used shell casing. I’m not playing other people’s games anymore.»
«Now I’m playing my own, and I need your help.» I took the folder with the evidence against Chambers from my bag and put it on the table. «This is my ace, but I’m not going to trade it. I’m going to use it to take everything from them.»
Leo carefully opened the folder. His eyes widened. He quickly closed it and looked around nervously.
«Do you understand that you’re holding a bomb that could blow up the entire city?» «That’s exactly what I plan to do,» I replied. My gaze was cold and resolute.
Leo looked at me and saw a completely different person, not the frightened woman he had met a few days earlier. This woman was dangerous. «What do you propose,» he asked.
And there was respect in his voice. «They think they’ve got me cornered.» I began to lay out my plan.
«They’re sure I’ll either go to jail or run away, and they are in a hurry. They need to finalize the apartment sale and leave the country as quickly as possible before their construction scam is exposed. Their weakness is greed and haste.»
«That’s what we’ll exploit.» The plan was daring and risky. It required perfect execution.
First, Leo, using his old journalistic skills, prepared a small news item. It appeared two days later in an inconspicuous column of the local business newspaper, the City Sentinel. The headline was neutral.
«Foreign investors show interest in frozen regional construction projects.» The text mentioned that a certain Swiss investment group, HVTA Capital, was exploring investment opportunities in commercial real estate, and was particularly interested in the new shopping complex project on the city’s outskirts, the very project I was implicated in. «That’s not enough,» Leo said when he showed me the newspaper. «They might not even notice.»
«We need a bigger lure.» «We’ll have one,» I replied. «Now we need to make sure this news reaches them personally, and not just news, a concrete offer.»
But an offer required money. A lot of money to make the bait believable. And then, something strange happened.
The next day, Leo called me. His voice was bewildered. «Naomi, I don’t understand. A huge sum was just deposited into my account. 125,000 dollars. An anonymous transfer.»
I smiled faintly. I knew who the anonymous donor was. Eleanor.
I had refused her plan, but the old schemer couldn’t resist seeing the finale of the play she herself had started. She had placed her bet. Now we had both the rod and the bait.
Leo activated his most reliable channel for gossip, the chatty administrator of the city’s most expensive beauty salon, where Tiffany was a regular. Half a day later, Tiffany knew, in strict confidence, that the Swiss investors were ready to buy out the project rights for double the price to avoid scandals with city authorities and speed up the process. And most importantly, they wanted to talk only to the original signatory from the plant, the person whose signature was on the documents.
Me. Tiffany took the bait. Greed outweighed caution.
The thought of snatching another gigantic payout right before their escape was too tempting. That evening, Marcus called me. His voice was tense.
He tried to sound calm, but failed to hide his anxiety. «Naomi, I have a business proposition for you regarding a certain project.» «I don’t want to talk to you, Marcus,» I replied wearily, playing my role.
«Listen, this is in your own interest,» he hissed into the phone. «We’re talking about big money, very big. Let’s meet. There are people willing to pay. We can solve all our problems once and for all.»
We agreed to meet the next day at 7 o’clock in the evening in a private conference room at the Grand Regency Hotel, the city’s most expensive and respectable hotel. They wanted to frame it as a serious business transaction. «They’re caught,» Leo said when I hung up. «Now we need to prepare.»
«We’ll need people to play the Swiss representatives. I have a couple of former colleagues, down-on-their-luck actors. For a good fee, they’ll play anyone.»
The day dragged by agonizingly. Leo and I meticulously worked out every detail of the upcoming meeting. How the investors would look, what they would say, where the recording equipment would be hidden.
Everything was going according to plan. At 5 o’clock in the evening, two hours before the meeting, my phone rang again. It was Marcus.
«Listen carefully,» he said, and there was no more fake business-like tone in his voice, only a cold, authoritative command. Change of plans. Everything inside me went cold.
«What happened?» «Nothing happened. It will be safer for everyone this way. No hotel. We’re meeting somewhere else.»
«Where?» I asked, although I already guessed I was about to hear something bad. «You’ll come to the plant,» Marcus enunciated clearly.
«To your old office at 7 p.m. You’ll come alone. You will bring all the documents, your I.D., and a notarized transfer of rights for that project in your name.»
«The investors will transfer the money to us. We will give you your share. In cash.»
«But why at the plant?» My voice trembled. «It’s empty in the evening.» «Precisely,» he replied in an icy tone.
«Fewer unnecessary eyes. And don’t you dare do anything stupid. Come alone. We will be waiting.»
He hung up. I sat with the phone in my hand, staring into space. Leo was looking at me, waiting for an explanation.
«They changed the location,» I said hollowly. «The plant, my office, at night.» «It’s a trap,» he instantly realized.
«They want to get rid of you. Naomi, we can’t go there. We have to call everything off.»
I slowly raised my eyes to him. There was no fear in them. Only the cold, ringing emptiness that remains after everything that could burn has burned down.
«No,» I said. «We won’t call anything off. We’ll go there. I will go.»
«Are you insane?» Leo jumped up. «They’ll kill you.» «That’s what they want,» I replied calmly.
«They expect to see a frightened victim who comes alone to a dark, empty building, and they will see her. We’re just going to change the ending of their play a little.» I stood up and walked to the window.
The plan that had crystallized in my head was insane, but I had no other. «Leo, we don’t need your actors anymore. We need real spectators.»
«Call the number I’m about to give you. Say that Naomi Sterling is speaking. Say that tonight at the regional manufacturing hub, a bribe transfer and a confession to grand economic fraud will take place, and that the district attorney is involved in the case.»
I wrote Eleanor’s phone number on a piece of paper. «She’ll understand what to do,» Leo asked with doubt. «She won’t miss a finale like this,» I smirked.
«This is her investment, and now the most important thing. I need to make one call.» I took out the other phone, a simple button operated one that Leo had bought me for secrecy.
I found a voice changer app online. It was a desperate, almost theatrical move, but I had to try. I dialed Marcus’s number, activated the program, setting the tone to sound like my sister Tia’s tearful, hysterical voice.
«Hello?» Marcus answered, irritated. «Marcus, Marcus, it’s me.» I screamed into the phone with the altered voice, mimicking panic.
«I’m in trouble. The police, they’re asking questions about our conversation, about the documents.» «What?» Marcus was clearly rattled. «Calm down. What questions?»
«They’re asking where I got those papers. They’re talking about some kind of scam. Marcus, you promised everything would be clean.»
«You promised to pay off my loans. You confirm it, don’t you? You do confirm everything?»
«Just calm down, Tia,» he hissed into the phone. «Yes, I confirmed everything. All your debts are settled. The apartment is almost ours. The money will be delivered tonight.»
«Calm down and keep silent. Understood. Don’t tell them a word.»
«And Tiffany? And her father? He’ll cover for us,» I continued to sob hysterically. «We’ll use him, and then we won’t need him.»
Marcus threw out maliciously. «As soon as we cross the border, I’ll shut him up. Don’t worry. He won’t be able to do anything.»
«That’s it? Don’t call me again?» I pressed disconnect and saved the recording.
That was all I needed. A confession to everything. Bribing my sister, the apartment scam, the fraud, and even the plans for the district attorney.
At quarter to seven, I drove up to the plant gate. I let the taxi go and walked alone through the dark, echoing gates. The security guard at the gate, alerted by Marcus’ call, silently let me through.
I walked across the vast dead territory. A light was only on in the windows of my old administrative building. I went up the stairs to the second floor.
