Part 4 — On My Birthday, My Boss Asked Me to Marry Her, but After My Answer Her Most Powerful Partner Stopped Smiling

“Harrison, this recording is already being made about us…”

At that same moment, the light in the server room went out.

Elena’s hand closed around my wrist. For several seconds, only our breathing could be heard. Then, from far away, came the sound of a metal door slamming.

“We have to get out of here,” I whispered.

“We have to find the original.”

“First we have to stay alive.”

I turned on the weak light of my phone. In the corner of the room stood an old server, and a red light was blinking on it. Beside it, a small camera lay on the floor, its lens pointed toward us.

Elena understood immediately.

“They want us to have been here. Then they will say that we deleted the files.”

Footsteps sounded outside the door.

I took Elena by the hand and led her behind the servers, into a narrow passage of technical cables. It smelled of dust and heated plastic. For several seconds, we both stood motionless.

The door opened.

Liam entered.

“I know you are here,” he said. “All of this is pointless. Tomorrow they will blame you anyway.”

Elena’s shoulder was trembling, but her voice was calm.

“Do not touch Nora.”

“Nora is already with the police, if she is smart. But you can still save everything.”

“What are you offering?”

“Sign the marriage document. Make your husband sign it too. Then Victor will take the shares, and you will leave quietly.”

“And Harrison?”

“Harrison will have to spend several years in court. But if he does not sign, prison may await him too.”

My burning fear suddenly turned into calm. I put my hand into my pocket and felt the hard cover of the notebook. I did not have only notes in it. On the last page, which Liam did not know about, I had written the access code to the company’s backup system. Nora had given me the code three weeks earlier, when I still believed I was investigating an ordinary accounting error.

Elena looked toward me.

I slowly nodded.

We came out of the technical passage.

“Liam,” I said, “if we are going to court tomorrow, we should take your voice with us too.”

He looked at me.

“What do you mean?”

I raised the phone. The recording was already uploading live to the company’s backup storage. Liam’s last words, his threat, and Victor’s plan were being stored in three different places at once.

His face became gray.

“Turn it off.”

“It’s already too late.”

“Harrison, you have no idea whom you are fighting.”

“Now you know whom you are fighting too.”

Liam stepped back. At that very moment, a police siren sounded in the underground corridor. Nora had managed to get outside and send a message to Investigator Dato Mchedlishvili, whom I knew from a financial-fraud case in the past.

Liam ran toward the exit, but two police officers were waiting for him at the door.

“Hands on your head!” one shouted.

Liam looked first at Elena, then at me.

“This is not over for you,” he told me.

“I know,” I answered. “But they will no longer hide it for your benefit.”

The next morning, at nine o’clock, we entered the company’s boardroom. Raindrops struck the windows. Black microphones stood on the table. Victor was already there, with two lawyers sitting beside him.

Elena said to me in a low voice:

“You can leave now. The marriage is no longer necessary. The recording is enough.”

“Do you still want me to leave?”

“I want you to choose yourself for the first time.”

“That is what I am doing.”

“How?”

“By staying with you, but not because of the deal.”

Tears appeared in her eyes and she immediately wiped them away.

The meeting began. Victor’s lawyer accused Elena of financial negligence. He displayed tables of the transfers on the screen.

“Your signature is on these documents, Ms. Vance.”

“The signature is mine. The money is not.”

“Do you have evidence to prove this?”

I stood up.

“We do.”

First the chain of the accounts appeared on the screen, then the camera recording. Liam’s voice sounded through the room.

“After Harrison is dismissed, the entire responsibility for the audit will pass to him.”

Victor’s lawyer immediately cried out:

“This recording was obtained illegally!”

Investigator Mchedlishvili placed a sealed device on the table.

“The original file was obtained from the company’s server. Its time stamps and voice analysis match. In addition, the physical camera that stored the recording has been presented.”

Victor stood up from his chair.

“This is political revenge.”

For the first time Elena did not interrupt him.

“No, Victor. This is the result.”

“You will lose all this.”

“Perhaps. But you will no longer receive what you built with my fear.”

Mchedlishvili approached him.

“Victor Hale, you are under arrest on charges of financial fraud, threats, and pressure on witnesses.”

Victor looked toward me. In his eyes there was no longer the confident calm I had seen on the birthday.

“You will be punished for this, boy.”

“Perhaps,” I said. “But today, for the first time, I am not afraid.”

Liam was arrested that same day. Nora gave testimony. The marriage contract was annulled because it was confirmed that the hidden-debt clause had been deliberately inserted. The court announced a temporary suspension concerning Elena’s father’s will, while the shares were transferred to independent management until the investigation was completed.

Peace did not come immediately.

The phones rang all day. Investors demanded answers. Employees stood at the office door waiting for a guarantee from Elena. The lawyer who had prepared the contract refused to defend it and left the city the very next day.

Elena called him.

“Did you know about the clause?”

“I only received the document.”

“Your signature is on the last page.”

“I don’t remember.”

Elena ended the call.

“Was he involved too?” I asked.

“Probably. But now, for the first time, he will have to listen to his own words.”

That evening Investigator Mchedlishvili brought us an audio recording found in Liam’s office. It was another file. Liam was speaking to Victor in his room, certain that no one was listening.

His voice sounded on the recording:

“Harrison will check everything, but Elena will blind him with sentiments. If necessary, we will get them to the wedding and then bring them both down.”

Elena was sitting in a chair. I stood beside her.

While listening to his own words, Liam first began to laugh, then became lost in silence. Finally, he buried his head in his hands.

I was not happy.

Sometimes a person’s heaviest punishment is being unable to escape their own voice.

Three days later I returned to Elena’s house. The remnants of the birthday balloons still hung in the yard. Several golden balloons had disappeared, but one had remained caught on a tree branch and had partly deflated in the rain.

A cake plate stood on the table. Only a dried white strip of cream remained on it.

I entered the study. The folder was no longer on the table. In its place I saw my small leather notebook. The compass burned into its cover had cracked slightly from the rain.

Elena stood in the doorway.

“You can take it,” she told me.

“The notebook?”

“Everything. If you want, not only the company, but this house too.”

“I have taken nothing from you.”

“I know. That is why I want you to stay.”

“As a husband?”

Elena smiled slowly.

“As a person who no longer needs to prove himself to me.”

I did not answer immediately.

“I still don’t know whether I will be able to stay with you.”

“Neither do I know whether I will be able to trust.”

“Then for the first time we are truly in the same position.”

This was our first honest conversation since that night.

Six weeks later the company resumed work. Several investors withdrew, but most of the employees stayed. Elena wrote new rules for the board of directors: no inheritance should ever force a person into marriage, and no financial decision should be hidden behind one person’s signature.

I moved to an independent audit group. I took a small office on the other side of the river. In the morning I always drank bitter coffee at the same café, and in the afternoon I taught new employees how to see lies hidden in numbers.

Elena and I slowly learned to be together.

At first we met only once a week. Then twice a week. We never mentioned marriage as if it were still lying on the table.

One evening, three months later, the first snow began.

We were standing in Elena’s kitchen. Snowflakes clung to the window. She placed a small drawing on the table.

“Who is this?” I asked.

In the drawing, two people stood beside each other, with tangled lights drawn above them. In the corner was a small circle that looked like a compass.

“It is my niece’s drawing,” Elena said. “She drew it for you.”

“Why am I so tall?”

“Because when she first saw you, she thought you were a security guard.”

I laughed.

Elena smiled too. This time her smile hid nothing.

In the fourth month I received a letter from Victor. It had been sent from prison. The letter said that he wanted to meet me, explain everything, and, as he put it, “restore the old relationship.”

Elena saw the letter on the table.

“Will you meet him?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“For the first time, I am.”

I also read the last message sent in his name. It said that if we reached an agreement, he could receive a lighter sentence.

I wrote only one sentence:

“I will no longer save you from your consequences.”

Then I turned off the phone.

Elena asked me nothing. She simply closed the kitchen window because snow was coming inside.

“You know, if I had agreed that night, everything might have ended differently,” she told me.

“Perhaps.”

“And still, if we were starting again now, I would ask you the same way.”

“Beside the cake?”

“No. First I would burn the folder.”

“And then?”

Elena looked toward me.

“Then I would simply tell you that I no longer want to be alone.”

This time I knew the answer.

“Then I will simply tell you that I am not going anywhere.”

At the end of the evening I had to go home. At the door I took my coat, and from its pocket I took out the leather notebook. The little compass burned into the cover in childhood was still visible, despite the cracked line.

Elena ran her finger over it.

“Do you always carry this?”

“When I don’t know which way to go.”

“Do you know now?”

Outside the window, snow was quietly falling on the yard. The old birthday lights had already been removed, but one small light could not be found. It had remained on the tree branch and was shining warmly in the white snow.

I put the notebook into my pocket.

“Now, for the first time, I know.”

I no longer needed the compass.