The apartment was silent except for the low hum of the refrigerator and the steady click of rain on the fire escape. Alice sat cross-legged on the couch, laptop balanced on her knees, the glow painting her face in shades of blue and grey. On the table beside her sat the photograph, the envelope, and the burner phone — the holy trinity of her current obsession.
ValeCorp.
The name stared back at her from the search bar, sterile and confident, as if it had nothing to hide. Every link she opened led to the same thing — polished press releases, charity initiatives, tax filings so clean they squeaked. No gaps. No typos. No fingerprints.
It was too perfect.
She typed faster, tracing the shell subsidiaries listed in their filings: logistics, imports, consultancy firms, all with names bland enough to disappear in plain sight. One redirect after another sent her to error pages. The deeper she went, the more her system slowed. Then, suddenly, the laptop fan whined, the cursor froze, and a small icon blinked on her screen: **ACCESS DENIED**
She exhaled through her nose. "Cute."
For a moment, she just sat there, staring at her reflection in the dark monitor. Marcus used to say the truth never hid — it just waited. Maybe this was it, waiting behind code and power lines instead of locked doors and knives.
---
By midnight, she was at the back of a shuttered coffee shop in the South Side. The place smelled like stale beans and secrets. A single neon light buzzed above a counter stacked with hard drives and tangled cables.
"Tess," Alice called quietly.
From behind a rack of routers, a woman in her forties emerged — purple hair fading at the tips, cigarette clamped between her lips. Her glasses caught the light like mirrors.
"Jesus, Pierce," Tess muttered. "You don't call, you don't text, and then you show up talking about ValeCorp? You looking to get both of us ghosted?"
"Just a peek under the mask," Alice said. "Something's off."
Tess snorted. "Off? It's a goddamn fortress. Whatever's under that logo, they don't want sunlight. But…" She sat, cracked her knuckles, and started typing.
Lines of code flickered across the monitor. Alice watched, arms folded, as Tess's smirk faded.
"Well, I'll be damned," Tess whispered. "You see this? Every sub-company's funnelling through one offshore account. Cayman registry. The holder's name is blank — until you cross-reference the license numbers."
"Show me."
Tess tapped a few keys, zoomed in on a string of data. The account name popped up: **M. L. Vale.**
Alice frowned. "Not Vera."
"Nope," Tess said. "Unless Vera suddenly grew a middle name that starts with L and aged thirty years." She turned to face her. "You recognise that pattern of transfers? They match your old case logs — the Broker ring, five years ago. Same structure."
Alice's pulse thudded in her throat. "So ValeCorp's laundering for someone bigger."
"Someone old," Tess added quietly. "Be careful, Alice. You dig here, you're not pulling dirt — you're pulling bone."
---
The streets were wet again when Alice left the shop. She cut through the industrial blocks, head down, jacket collar turned up. A black sedan idled a block behind her, keeping its distance.
She tested it — turned right down a narrow street. The car followed.
Turned left into a construction zone — it stopped at the corner.
Alice stepped into the shadows of an unfinished scaffold, waited, hand on her sidearm. When she finally doubled back, the car was gone. Only the hiss of tyres and rain remained.
Then she saw it — a folded piece of paper tucked under her windshield wiper. She opened it under the streetlight.
> **Stop digging, Pierce. You're not the only one who knows about your father.**
Her jaw clenched. The paper trembled slightly in her hand before she forced it still.
---
Back home, the apartment felt smaller than usual. She didn't turn on the lights. The glow from the street seeped through the blinds, slicing the darkness into bars. She dropped her gun on the table, then sat and stared at the wall.
Her father's voice echoed in the back of her skull — gravel and warning. *Never chase ghosts, kid. They'll make sure you join them.*
She looked at the photograph again: Vera's composed smile beside the man with the crest ring. The same design Marcus wore. The same ring she once saw flecked with blood when he came home late and silent.
Her throat tightened.
She whispered into the empty room, "The Martins are back."
The silence that followed was heavier than any answer could've been.
Alice picked up her phone and scrolled to Vera's number. Her thumb hovered, then pressed *call.*
"Ms Vale," she said when the line connected. "Dinner sounds nice."
A pause.
"I'll bring the questions."
-----
Vera Vale didn't like interruptions.
Her mornings were measured, her routines exact — black coffee at six, glass of water with lemon at seven, and a review of overnight wire reports at eight sharp. Her penthouse office overlooked the river, all marble and reflection, where the city's noise softened into something almost beautiful.
Disorder, she believed, was a disease. One she'd spent her entire life curing in other people.
The screen on her desk glowed with the day's first report. A contract dispute resolved in her favor. A journalist's half-baked blog about ValeCorp's offshore dealings — flagged, throttled, and buried within the hour. The note attached read simply: **Handled.**
She smiled faintly, then closed the file.
Her assistant's voice came through the intercom.
"Ms. Vale, Detective Pierce confirmed for tonight. Seven o'clock, Elysian Room."
Vera's finger stilled on the desk. The faintest pause.
"Good," she said softly. "Make sure the private suite is cleared. And inform security — discreetly."
"Yes, ma'am."
The intercom clicked off.
Vera stood, her reflection following her across the glass floor. Her suit was charcoal grey, tailored sharp enough to cut. Outside, the city shimmered like a promise it had never kept.
Alice Pierce.
She'd seen the file — intelligence, temper, persistence. Marcus's daughter. Arthur's daughter.
The name was like a shadow in her throat. No one spoke it anymore — not inside the circle, not outside it. Arthur Martin had died the day he walked away from the family. The man who'd replaced him, Marcus Pierce, had lived only to keep the wolves from his doorstep.
And Vera had let him.
Her fingers tightened around her coffee cup until she heard the porcelain strain.
"You always thought you could save them, brother," she murmured to the window. "Even from me."
---
The restaurant was the kind that pretended not to exist — an unmarked door, a black staircase leading down into candlelight and soft jazz. The kind of place where people made decisions that never showed up on paper.
Vera was already seated when Alice arrived.
The detective entered without ceremony — coat still damp from the rain, hair tied back, eyes sweeping the room before she even sat.
"Detective Pierce," Vera greeted smoothly. "I was beginning to think you'd changed your mind."
Alice slid into the seat across from her. "I don't like wasting good wine."
Vera's smile curved faintly. "A practical woman. I admire that."
They didn't order. The waiter knew better than to interrupt.
For a while, silence filled the space between them — music low and haunting. Then Vera spoke, her tone as measured as her every breath.
"You've been asking about my company," she said. "And about my past. That's… risky."
Alice's eyes didn't flinch. "So is building an empire on people's graves. Depends on your definition of risky."
Vera chuckled quietly, without warmth. "You sound like your father."
Alice's expression flickered. "You knew him?"
Vera's gaze softened — almost imperceptibly. "I knew who he was. Before he became Marcus Pierce."
Alice froze. Her pulse stuttered.
"What did you just say?"
Vera didn't look away. "Arthur. That was his name, once. The Martins had a gift for finding people with potential — and for breaking them when they strayed. He… broke the rules. For you. For your mother."
Alice's hands tightened beneath the table. The room tilted slightly, her breath sharp. "You're lying."
"If I were," Vera said softly, "you wouldn't have that ring in your drawer."
The words landed like a blade. Alice didn't remember telling anyone about the ring — the one she found in Marcus's things, carved with the crest she'd only seen in shadows.
Vera reached for her wine, her tone unreadable. "He tried to protect you, Detective. That's what Arthur did best. Even when it cost him everything."
"Why tell me this?" Alice asked, voice low.
"Because the world you're walking into," Vera said, setting the glass down, "is the same one that swallowed him whole. And it's starting to notice you."
---
When Alice stepped back into the rain, the city lights looked different — colder, stretched thin over streets that suddenly felt familiar in all the wrong ways.
Across the street, the black sedan idled again.
She didn't look at it this time. She just whispered, "Arthur Martin, huh?" under her breath — like testing a ghost's name — and walked into the night.
Behind her, in the reflection of the restaurant window, Vera watched until the detective vanished from sight.
"Just like him," she murmured. "Always walking toward the fire."