Chapter Twenty-Seven: The truth.
Location: Pink cafe. Time: 9:00pm.
Tammy's fingers trembled over the keyboard, eyes bloodshot and weary as lines of code blurred before her. The tech café's dim light flickered above her head, the low hum of cooling fans and buzzing devices forming a soundscape she was far too used to. For the past thirty hours, she hadn't slept. She couldn't. Not when she was this close.
She let out a slow breath and hit "Execute."
The code responded immediately, bypassing encrypted layers like they were tissue paper. Her custom algorithm was built for this—to unravel layers of overwritten surveillance and decrypt compressed video fragments.
Footage loading.
File: HOTEL_CAM_0409_0315AM.
Tammy's heart clenched. This was it. The night it all changed.
The screen lit up, grainy at first, then sharpening as her system processed it. The hallway of the hotel was quiet. Time stamp: 03:15 a.m. A man in a staff uniform entered Jeremy's suite with a keycard. He wasn't room service. His movements were deliberate. A glove on his hand. He went straight for the room controls and disabled the hallway camera with a small device.
Tammy leaned forward, her stomach lurching. The man was Tony's assistant—she'd seen his face once at the fundraising gala Jeremy had taken her to weeks ago.
"Gotcha," she whispered, pressing record.
But she didn't stop there. She rerouted the footage to three separate cloud backups, two local drives, and an encrypted offline USB that she slipped into her bra. If anyone was going to bury the truth, they'd have to bury her with it.
Her stomach growled, loud and unforgiving. She blinked hard, trying to refocus, but the ache behind her eyes and the raw burn in her throat said she hadn't had water in hours. She reached for her bottle—empty.
She ignored it. Her body could wait.
Tammy opened a fresh document, started compiling her findings: timestamps, device signatures, hotel access logs—all connecting the assistant to Tony Balogun. And to Jeremy's drugging.
But even as she worked, her hands began to slow. She rubbed her eyes and felt the sting of dryness, her vision dimming at the edges. Her reflection on the dark screen showed more than exhaustion. It showed a girl unraveling.
She couldn't stop now. She had to stay ahead of them.
Her screen pinged with a proximity alert. A device had pinged her location using a nonpublic admin signal—government tier, high-end.
Her heart stilled. Someone was tracing her.
Tammy scrambled to shut everything down, pull the USB and wipe traces. Within seconds, the café system went dark. She slid her hoodie up, shoved her equipment into her bag, and slipped out the side door, heart pounding.
Meanwhile, across town, Jeremy sat in his office, a tablet in hand showing a traced map of a network breach—one of his own systems. The IP address had pinged from an unregistered node: his old private interface, one he'd abandoned years ago.
"She used my code," he murmured, eyes scanning the strings.
Zion leaned against the doorway behind him. "She's getting close."
Jeremy didn't reply.
Zion stepped inside. "She's risking too much. Her health—her life. If you really want to find her, stop acting like it's about your image and admit what you feel."
Jeremy's jaw clenched. "You think I don't care?"
"I think you care too damn much, and you're scared to admit it." Zion's gaze was sharp. "She's out there alone, breaking her body down to prove something that shouldn't need proving."
Jeremy's grip tightened around the tablet. "I never asked her to."
"No, but you let her believe she was disposable."
There was a long pause. Jeremy looked out the window, the city lights cold and vast before him.
Back at Rita's place, Rita slammed her phone down and groaned. "These society rats don't sleep, sha." She walked into the living room where Anjii was curled up with a laptop. "Another senator's wife just tried to imply Tammy eloped with a foreigner. I almost flung my drink at her."
Anjii glanced up. "At this point, people just like hearing themselves talk."
Rita exhaled. "We need to buy time. I'll make calls. Delay the press, distract the board, spin a new narrative if I have to."
Anjii frowned. "You think Tammy's okay?"
"She's Tammy," Rita said, but her voice lacked conviction. "She'll survive."
In a dark motel room, Tammy crouched beside a mini-fridge, barely able to twist off the cap of a water bottle. Her hands were shaking too much. She forced down a few sips and let herself sink onto the mattress.
The footage was safe.
The proof was real.
But now came the hard part: exposing it without becoming a target herself.
And as sleep crept over her like a tidal wave, Tammy clutched the USB like it was her last breath.