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

That evening, in my stepfather’s house, my name was written beside the contract, as if I were not a person but property for sale.

Celine lit twenty-four candles in the dining room. It was not my birthday, but there was a chocolate cake on the table and beside it a crystal glass in which golden liquid slowly swayed. Beyond the windows, rain beat against the roof. Inside the room, however, there was such silence, as if everyone were waiting for something to begin.

“Sit down, Lia,” Celine told me with a smile. “Today the family needs your help.”

“If help is needed, why did you bring security?”

Two tall men stood on both sides of the door. Raindrops still glittered on their black jackets. Celine shrugged and held out the glass to me.

“Because lately you have been very emotional.”

The first sip seemed bitter to me. Within several seconds, my fingers became heavy. The edges of the room slowly blurred, but I still clearly saw the red leather folder lying on the surface of the table. My surname was written on it.

Across from me sat Vance Sterling. A sixty-one-year-old investor whom everyone in the city feared. One drop of champagne had fallen onto his silver hair, but he did not wipe it with a napkin. He simply looked at me like a complicated deal.

“Your father’s company will close tomorrow morning because of its debts,” he said. “I can save it.”

“And in exchange?”

Celine did not let me answer.

“Vance is interested in you. First an engagement, then a wedding. Tonight you only need to prove that you understand the word ‘obedience.’”

Coldness poured into my stomach. I tried to stand up from the chair, but my knees did not obey me.

“You are both crazy.”

“No, dear,” Celine laughed quietly. “We are practical.”

At that moment I realized that something had been mixed into the drink. My palms became cold. For three weeks I had secretly been collecting information about the finances of the Halden Group, and I knew that the company’s collapse had not happened for the reason Celine repeated to everyone. Money was disappearing from the accounts. Signatures were fake. Someone from inside was destroying everything.

And Celine knew it.

“In the morning you will sign away the shares carrying eighteen percent of the voting rights,” she told me. “And then no one will bother you anymore.”

“What if I do not sign?”

Her smile disappeared.

“Then they will take Father to prison. And you will leave this house only when Vance wants you to.”

The security men grabbed me and took me into the guest room. The door was locked from the outside. I fell to the floor and counted my breathing for several minutes. My bag was under the bed, but they had already taken my phone. In my pocket, only a small ivory-colored card remained, which Father had given me in childhood. On it, in his handwriting, was written: “When you cannot open the door, look for the window.”

I went into the bathroom. The narrow window was almost under the ceiling. I took the marble soap dish and struck the glass with all my strength. The first blow was not enough. On the second, dust fell away. On the third, the window shattered and glass pierced my left palm.

Outside, rain struck my face. I left my shoes in the room. I ran to the fence when I heard dogs barking behind me and the security men shouting.

The headlights of a black car appeared on the road. I stepped directly in front of it and raised my bloody hands.

The car stopped several centimeters from my knees. The rear door opened.

“Get in,” said a man dressed in a dark coat.

I rushed inside. The door closed. He extended a tablet toward me.

“You give up the eighteen percent right now, or I will take you back.”

Then the man looked at my face, and I recognized the person whose name Celine mentioned in a whisper at every meeting. His hand moved toward the folder…

His hand moved toward the folder, but stopped before opening it.

“You are Rowan Hart,” I whispered.

For the first time, astonishment appeared in the man’s eyes. His name had been spoken in the company with fear for years. Rowan Hart had been the Halden Group’s former financial director. Two years earlier, Father had accused him of theft and forced him to flee the country.

“You know more than you should know.”

“You also know that my father is not a thief.”

He closed the folder. The smell of leather and wet asphalt filled the car’s interior. My blood dripped onto the light-colored fabric of the seat.

“Hold your palm,” he told me.

“First tell me why I should trust you.”

“You should not trust me. But you have no choice.”

He told the driver not to turn back. In the distance, flashing lights could be seen near the house. The security car came onto the road, but Rowan suddenly turned onto an old industrial street. The tires roared on the wet cobblestones.

“If I get out of here alive, I will testify against you too,” I told him.

“That is exactly why I saved you.”

“Did you save me, or do you want to steal the shares?”

Rowan turned the tablet toward me again. The document said that I was voluntarily giving up the shares and taking all of the Halden Group’s obligations upon myself. At the bottom was an empty space for my signature.

“This is only an external document,” he said. “If you sign, Celine will think she has won.”

“You are asking for the same thing, aren’t you?”

“I want her to think that she has won.”

The car stopped at an old hotel standing beside the river. It was two o’clock in the morning. Rowan led me into the lobby. Only one lamp was lit there, and a dusty bell stood on the counter. A young woman was waiting in the room with a first-aid kit.

“I am Mara,” she told me. “I will treat your hand, if you allow me.”

“Are you a doctor?”

“Better than that. I used to be a police investigator.”

Mara removed the pieces of glass. I clenched my teeth at every touch. Rowan stood by the window and looked at his phone.

“Celine will have your father arrested in the morning,” he said. “She already has a bribed auditor’s testimony.”

“Auditor Daniel Cross?”

Rowan looked at me.

“You know his name too?”

“I compared the reports received from him with the bank statements. Six transfers did not exist in the report, but they were written in the copies that came into my hands.”

“Where are those copies?”

I put my hand into my pocket and pulled out a small card with held breath. On the back of the card, I had copied numbers written by Father’s hand. I had no phone, but I knew all the codes by memory.

Rowan looked at the card and his face changed.

“These are accounts from a Swiss bank.”

“No. This is only the first layer.”

That night, for the first time, I told him that three weeks earlier I had found a copy of a server hidden in Father’s office. It showed that money was moving from the company’s accounts into Celine’s private fund. But the strangest thing was that the transfers happened during the hours when Celine claimed she was at home.

“Where is the server copy?” Mara asked.

“In a safe place.”

“Where?”

“First I need to know whether you are truly on my side.”

Rowan exhaled heavily.

“I am not on your side, Lia. I am on the side of the truth.”

At seven in the morning, Celine herself called me on Mara’s phone. Her voice was calm, as if I had not run away from the house the previous night.

“I know where you are,” she told me. “And I know what you have.”

“Then why are you calling me?”

“Because your father has just told the police that everything was your plan.”

The air stopped in the room. Father’s voice was heard from the other side of the phone, because Celine had switched the call to speaker.

“Lia, trust no one,” he said in a hoarse voice. “Especially Rowan. He was the only person who entered your room that night…”

Then the connection broke, and Rowan placed a small dark metal box in front of me and said that it contained the answer to that night…

Rowan opened the dark metal box. Inside lay a small memory card, three printed pages, and an old audio recorder.

Mara locked the door. It was eight in the morning, and a cleaner’s cart slowly rattled in the hotel corridor. I sat down at the table, a white bandage tightly wrapped around my hand.

“This recording was made on the night Rowan left the company,” Mara told me.

“Why did you not publish it?”

Rowan lowered his eyes.

“Because then they took my wife and child from me by threatening me. Celine told me that if I raised my voice, I would never see them again.”

He pressed the button on the recorder.

First there was static. Then Celine’s voice, sharp and cold.

“Halden will collapse at the board of directors’ meeting tomorrow. Everyone will think his mistakes are the reason.”

The second voice belonged to Vance Sterling.

“Will the daughter sign away the shares?”

“If she does not sign, they will take the father to prison. If she still resists, we will add a stronger dose to the drink.”

The recording stopped.

I could not breathe. Celine’s voice still circled through the room, as if the woman were standing behind the wall. All night I had repeated to myself that I was mistaken about something. Now there was nothing left to hide.

“This still does not prove the transfers,” I said quietly.

Rowan placed the printed pages in front of me. There were all the bank operations, the account of Celine’s private fund, and the debts purchased by Vance’s company. Celine had signed the final transfer.

“She deliberately destroyed the company,” Mara said. “Then Vance was supposed to buy it cheaply. And she used your shares to control the deal.”

“Did Father know?”

Rowan shook his head.

“He understood only during the last week. That is why he sent me a message.”

“But Celine told me that Father had put everything on me.”

“After the recording, she edited your father’s voice,” Mara said. “She cut phrases from an old interview. She wanted to deceive you.”

At that same moment, the sound of car brakes was heard in the hotel lobby. Rowan went to the window and slightly pulled back the curtain.

“They are Celine’s people.”

Mara took out a gun, but I stopped her hand.

“No. I do not want to run anymore.”

Rowan asked me:

“Are you sure?”

“All my life they decided when I should be afraid. Today I will decide when this ends.”

We called my father’s lawyer, Nikoloz Beren. He listened to the recording and did not speak at all for several seconds.

“Lia, if this is genuine, Celine and Vance will be exposed as involved not only in the company’s fraud. They will also be exposed for attempted kidnapping and coercion.”

“Then come.”

“I am already on my way.”

At noon, the police came as well. I told them everything: the locked room, the drink, the broken window, the document placed in the car. Rowan gave his own testimony and handed over the memory card.

I thought that I had already gone through the worst.

But Nikoloz put his phone on the table. A new message was visible on the screen. The sender was my father’s personal number.

“If Lia is reading this, Celine already knows the truth. But the main thing is that her father is alive only as long as Vance thinks the second folder does not exist.”

I slowly looked up at Rowan.

“Where is the second folder?”

Rowan’s face turned pale.

“In your house, in your father’s office.”

At that moment Celine called me. The call rang only once and went to speaker.

“If you want to see your father alive,” she said, “you will return home alone this evening. And you will bring the second folder with you…”