Part 4 — They showed me that I had to sell myself to save my family, but as soon as I got into the car, the unknown man’s face turned pale

Celine’s voice remained in the room for a long time even after the call ended.

Mara stood up first.

“The police are already providing your protection. You will not return home alone.”

“What if they are holding my father there?”

“That is exactly why you will not go alone,” Nikoloz said.

Rowan tapped his fingers on the table. His face looked as if the fear from years ago had returned again.

“Celine does not bluff.”

“Neither do I,” I answered.

That same day, Nikoloz filed an emergency motion with the judge. The police obtained a search warrant for Celine’s house. Vance’s offices would also be sealed. We were standing near the exit when Nikoloz’s phone rang.

“Mr. Beren,” he said, “I am Vance Sterling’s lawyer. I offer you an agreement.”

Nikoloz looked around the room.

“I am not interested.”

“You have not even heard me yet.”

“I have heard enough.”

“It may take your client years to bring the case to court.”

“My client needs freedom tonight. Yours probably needs a cell.”

Nikoloz ended the call.

It was the first time I felt that everything no longer stood only on my shoulders.

In the evening, we arrived at the Halden house in police cars. The gate was open. A hose lay in the yard, and water flowed in a thin stream between the stones. No lights were on in the house.

Mara said quietly to me:

“Stay behind.”

“My father is inside.”

“And that is exactly why you must stay alive to get him out.”

The doors were opened with the warrant. Everything in the living room was overturned. The large clock hanging on the wall had stopped at 21:17. At the end of the corridor, we heard a voice.

“Lia?”

It was my father’s voice.

He was sitting in an armchair in the office. His hands were tied, his shirt collar was torn, but he was alive. Celine stood beside him. She held a small pistol.

“Put the weapon down,” Mara shouted.

Celine looked at me entering.

“You were supposed to come alone.”

“You always wanted me to be alone.”

Father raised his head.

“Lia, do not come closer.”

“Father, I am here.”

Celine raised the gun slightly.

“The folder.”

I opened my bag and took out the old brown folder. Exactly the one I had found hidden beside the server in Father’s office. Celine extended her hand.

“Put it on the floor.”

“First let Father go.”

“Are you still trying to bargain?”

“No. I am buying time.”

Her eyebrow twitched.

At that moment, the small red light of a hidden camera lit up in the room. Rowan had installed it the previous evening. Celine did not know that every word she said was going directly to the police car.

“You planned all of this,” she said.

“No. You planned it. I only managed to listen.”

Celine laughed, but her voice cracked.

“I fed you, clothed you, raised you in this house.”

“You were part of my family. That is why I trusted you. But that does not give you the right to exchange my life for a company.”

Father lowered his eyes.

“I should have protected you.”

“I know.”

“I failed.”

“Trust me now, at least.”

Celine turned the pistol toward Father. Mara knocked her hand away in one step. The weapon fell to the floor, and the police officers pressed Celine against the wall.

“You do not know what you are doing!” she shouted. “Vance will not forgive this!”

“Vance is already at the police station,” Nikoloz said from the doorway. “His lawyer defended himself and handed over all the documents.”

Celine fell silent.

Several minutes later, a video statement transmitted from Vance’s office began playing. Vance himself appeared on the screen, saying: “The woman is part of the deal. If she does not sign away the shares, we will make her disappearance look as if she ran away herself.”

I recognized the words.

But what frightened me most was that it was his voice. The man had spoken his own sentence with his own mouth.

Vance was arrested at the police station that same evening. Celine was also charged with coercion, financial fraud, and attempted kidnapping. The Halden Group came under court supervision, while my eighteen percent was placed in a temporarily protected account.

After the prison van left, silence fell over the house.

I entered Father’s office. The shelves had been emptied. Only one photograph remained on the wall—my mother was standing by the window and holding a small ivory-colored card in her hand. The same one I had had in my pocket that night.

I took the photograph down.

No one was waiting for me in the office anymore. Neither Celine’s voice, nor the guards’ footsteps, nor a locked door.

Father looked at me slowly.

“Your mother made the card for you,” he told me. “And I wrote her words on the back because I wanted you always to find the path yourself.”

“That night I almost failed to find it.”

“But you found it anyway.”

Three weeks later, the city had changed. The case was still proceeding in court, but the doors of our house were no longer locked from the outside. Father was recovering and every day was learning for the first time how to live without fear.

As for me, I rented a small office on the other side of the river. There I helped people who had suffered in financial frauds. For the first time I received a salary in my own name, and not from the family company’s account.

Every morning I made coffee myself. A green plant stood by the window. A scar remained on my left palm, which itched when it rained.

One morning Father came to me. He held a drawing by a little girl. My niece, Nora, was drawing a house on the paper. The house had a large door and all the windows were open.

“She drew this for you,” Father told me.

“Why are all the windows open?”

“She said that you should no longer try to escape through the windows. Now the doors belong to you.”

I laughed. For the first time in a long while.

When winter came, the court approved independent management of the Halden Group. The company no longer belonged to Celine’s plan, Vance’s money, or my father’s fear. I kept part of the shares, and gave the rest to a fund helping the employees.

One evening, during the first snow, I received a message on my phone from an unknown number.

“Could you talk to me at least once? Everything was different from what you think.”

The sender was Celine.

The second message came several minutes later.

“I did everything for you.”

I looked at the screen for a long time. Then I put the phone on the table and wrote to Nikoloz that all further contact should be only through the lawyers.

I did not answer Celine.

Not because I was afraid.

Because saving her was no longer my responsibility.

At night I returned home. Nora’s drawing was attached to the refrigerator with a magnet in the hallway. Beside it I placed my mother’s photograph and the small ivory-colored card that I had stained with blood and rain.

I opened the window.

Cold air came in from outside, but this time I no longer needed to run away.

I found the door open.