The encounter with Maya in the library haunted Amelia for days. The journalism major's knowing smirk and cryptic warning were a siren's call, tempting her toward a dangerous truth. She tried to focus on her stories, on her classes, but the puzzle of Vale Corp was a splinter in her mind, festering.
She finally found Maya in the campus newsroom, a chaotic space buzzing with the energy of a dozen impending deadlines. Maya was at a computer, surrounded by empty coffee cups, her fingers flying across the keyboard.
"You," Maya said without looking up. "Knew you'd cave. Close the door."
Amelia did, the noise of the hallway cutting off abruptly. "What did you mean, I'm not the only one?"
Maya spun in her chair, her eyes bright with the fervor of a hunter on a scent. "I mean the Vale Corporation's financials are a work of fiction. A really, really profitable one. I've been following the trail for six months. It's all smoke and mirrors. Phantom projects, inflated assets." She leaned forward, her voice dropping. "My source inside says the pressure is building. The whole thing is a house of cards, and the wind is picking up."
"A source?" Amelia's mouth went dry. "Inside the company?"
"Was inside," Maya corrected, her expression turning grim. "He was a junior analyst. He got spooked, sent me a few encrypted files before he ghosted. He's in the wind now. Probably scared Alistair Vale would feed him his own liver." She studied Amelia's face. "Why are you so interested? This isn't just a class project."
Amelia's carefully constructed walls crumbled under the weight of her need to know. The words tumbled out in a hushed, frantic whisper—not about the relationship, but about the pressure, the ultimatum, the way Alistair Vale operated in threats and destruction. She spoke of the gala, the family dinner, the chilling certainty that something was profoundly wrong.
Maya listened, her journalistic detachment melting into something like understanding. "He threatened you. Personally."
Amelia nodded, unable to speak.
"That tracks. It's his signature move." Maya chewed on her lip, thinking. "The files my source sent… they're a mess. Partial records, pages missing. It's enough to know something's rotten, but not enough to prove it. The key is missing." She looked at Amelia, a new, unsettling idea dawning in her eyes. "You have a different kind of access, don't you?"
Amelia froze. "What? No. I told you, it's over."
"Is it?" Maya's gaze was piercing. "He's inside that company now. He sees things. He hears things. Whether he's talking to you or not, you're the only person on the planet he might trust."
The implication hung in the air, terrifying and immense. Maya wasn't just sharing information; she was recruiting her. She was suggesting that Adrian, trapped in the belly of the beast, could be the key to bringing it down.
"I can't ask him that," Amelia breathed, horror-struck. "He's trying to protect me. If he did something like that… his father would know it was him. He'd be destroyed."
"He's already being destroyed," Maya said softly, not unkindly. "People like that, they don't get out clean. They either go down with the ship, or they blow the whistle." She handed Amelia a plain, unmarked USB drive. "This is a copy of what I have. Look at it. See the shape of the lie for yourself. You don't have to decide anything now."
Amelia took the drive. It felt heavy as a brick in her hand, charged with lethal potential.
That night, in the privacy of her dorm room, with Chloe asleep, she plugged the drive into her laptop. The files were a labyrinth of spreadsheets and scanned documents. She didn't understand most of the financial jargon, but she could see the patterns Maya had mentioned—the dizzying, impossible profits from projects with vague, repeating names. She saw a trail of shell companies with names like "Apex Holdings" and "Pinnacle Ventures," all leading back to the same Vale Corp address.
It was the blueprint of a lie. The architecture of the fraud that had stolen Adrian from her.
She stared at the screen, the cold light washing over her face. Maya was right. Adrian was being destroyed, slowly, day by day, forced to become a custodian of his own prison.
The whistleblower had passed her the torch. The question now was whether she had the courage to carry it, and whether the boy she loved, trapped in the heart of the inferno, would be willing to light the match.