Chapter 37 Moving Pieces
Jack's POV
A few days later, my thoughts started doing that thing I hated most—Circling and refusing to land anywhere solid.
The kind of spiral that didn’t feel like panic, exactly, but like instinct scratching at the inside of my skull, telling me something had already gone wrong.
Elena knows that her father has leverage over me and I bet she'd been trying to find out what exactly but couldn't.
And I wasn't ready to tell her everything just yet, I wasn't ready to tell her that meeting for the first time at the bar wasn't a coincidence at all. Until I get what I want, I'll make sure she remains in the dark.
I was standing in the far corner of the executive wing, pretending to study the framed wall of Vale Corp’s “founding legacy.” In truth, I wasn’t reading a single plaque.
Conrad Vale’s face stared back at me from the center frame. Black and white. Sharp eyes and jaw like they’d been carved rather than grown. The kind of face that didn’t belong to the past no matter how old the photo was.
My stomach turned.
That asshole! I'd make him pay for what he did.
And the longer I stood there, the more certain I became that something wasn’t right.
My mind drifted unwillingly to Jeremy.
Jeremy Walsh, a legal analyst—Mia's assistant. A young man in his early twenties, who was always overprepared with a nervous laugh, had mysteriously vanished.
No calls or messages, even his company login had gone dark without warning. When I confronted HR, they threw around vague answers like—extended leave, personal matters and whatnot.
His disappearance was too smooth to not get suspicious of. People didn’t disappear quietly unless someone wanted them quiet.
I didn’t tell Elena what I was about to do. Not because I didn’t trust her—God, that wasn’t it. It was because she was already carrying too much. Her father, Mark, the board... The weight of a legacy that kept trying to choke her.
And if I was wrong? I didn’t want my paranoia to become another burden she had to manage.
But if I was right…
I needed to know before it exploded in her hands.
That evening, long after most of the building had emptied out, I lingered in the parking lot intending to trail Mia.
The concrete still held the day’s heat, radiating up through the soles of my boots. I leaned against my car with my hoodie up, cap pulled low, and my posture was loose in a way that didn’t matter enough to notice.
I’d learned a long time ago that invisibility wasn’t about hiding, but about looking unimportant.
From the third-level exit, Mia appeared.
She moved the same way she always did—her phone was in her hand, thumbs moving quickly, her expression was calm. There was no rush or distorted nerves and that, more than anything, set me on edge.
I straightened, slid into my car, and waited until she pulled out before easing after her. I kept my distance as I should—two cars back.
The city lights flickered on one by one as dusk slipped into early night, that in-between hour where everyone thought they were alone.
Mia drove clean, no detours or erratic turns. Just straight across town, ten minutes exactly, to a quiet residential complex.
I parked a block away and cut the engine. Then I watched as she pulled neatly into her space. She stepped out and walked toward her building without looking over her shoulder once.
For a few minutes, I stayed in the car, my hands rested on the steering wheel, as I breathed slow. I couldn't push away the doubt that pressed in around me, heavy and familiar.
Maybe she really was just going home and I was just chasing ghosts, or maybe I was projecting Conrad’s shadow onto everyone who stood too close to Elena.
But then Jeremy’s empty desk flashed through my mind, plus, the way Conrad’s name kept surfacing no matter how deep we dug. Then I knew that chance wasn’t a luxury anymore.
I stepped out of the car quietly, closing the door without a sound. From the glove compartment, I took the small tracker—black, no bigger than a coin, that I'd magnetized and prepped. I walked towards her car, glanced around once, more habit than fear, then knelt beside the rear bumper.
My fingers found the frame easily. The magnet clicked into place with a soft, satisfying finality. My pulse didn’t spike until I stood back up.
I walked away without looking back, slid into my car, and pulled off down the street like I’d never been there at all.
Whatever game Conrad was still playing and whatever role Mia thought she had in it, I decided that I was done waiting to see how it ended.
Back at the apartment, Elena was in the kitchen when I came in— it wasn't exactly where I’d expected her to be. The sight of her was electrifying and I couldn't deny that fact anymore even though I'd decided to keep things professional, I knew my thoughts and wild imaginations had broken the rules time and time again.
Her hair was twisted into a loose knot that was already half-falling apart, a mug of tea cupped between her hands like she was trying to absorb warmth straight through her skin.
She looked up when the door clicked shut behind me.
“You stayed late,” she said gently.
“Yeah,” I murmured, peeling off my jacket and hanging it by the door. My body felt tired in that hollow way that didn’t come from lack of sleep, but from carrying too much vigilance for too long. “I had to clear my head.” I lied.
She nodded once and didn’t ask anything else. Though I was grateful she didn't but it was still unnerving.
My hands itched and I knew they wanted. Without overthinking it, I crossed the kitchen and slid my arms around her waist from behind, pulling her back against my chest.
She froze at that but I didn't let her go because she fit there like she always had, like my body remembered her even when my mind was frayed. I rested my chin on her shoulder, breathing her in—tea, soap, something faintly floral.
“We’re close, Elena,” I said quietly. The words came out before I could second-guess them. “I can feel it. Whatever game Conrad’s playing… we’re close to breaking it.” I became so sure because I'd already put a tracker on Mia.
Then she leaned into me, her shoulders easing just a fraction. She didn’t answer, but I felt the truth of her belief settle into me through the way her hands tightened around her mug.
The next morning at Vale Corp, a notification sharp and intrusive, sliced through the quiet like a blade.
I was halfway through pouring Elena’s coffee, when my phone chimed. At the same exact second, hers did too.
Priority alert.
I froze.
Elena reached for her phone without thinking, eyes still hazy with sleep. I leaned back against the counter, coffee steaming forgotten in my hand, watching as confusion flickered across her face—then sharpened into something colder.
“What is it?” I asked.
She didn’t answer right away, she just stared at the screen like it had personally betrayed her.
“It's Mia,” she said finally, her voice sounded distant and almost hollow. “She… resigned. And it's effective immediately.”
Something in my chest tightened.
“What?” I set the mug down hard enough that coffee sloshed over the rim.
She turned the screen toward me. Legal had already flagged the email and the HR’s language was clean, sterile, almost offensively polite.
Per employee request, Mia's resignation has been acknowledged and processing is underway.
Wasn't it just yesterday that I'd trailed her?
“She didn’t even wait for fallout,” I muttered.
Elena dropped her phone onto the couch and folded her arms around herself. Her shoulders didn’t shake and she didn’t look shocked but tired—like bone-deep, marrow-level tired.
“I believe she ran,” she said softly.
I sat down beside her, still in sweats, still holding onto the feeling that if I moved too fast, everything might crack. “Or she’s covering her tracks.”
She nodded before she lifted a hand to rub her temple. “I should feel angry but I just feel exhausted instead.”
I hesitated, then rested my hand on her back, slow and steady. “We’ll figure everything out including what she's hiding."
She leaned into my touch like it was the only thing holding her upright. Her eyes stayed unfocused, distant. “Mia played her part well,” she murmured. “Almost too well. If she hadn't fallen into the trap by tampering with those files and if we hadn’t caught the audio…”
“She would’ve kept bleeding information,” I finished for her.
Then silence fell between us. It unnerved me that Mia was gone but the game hasn't stopped.
Back at the penthouse, the silence felt louder than the city outside.
I paced the length of the living room, back and forth, the way I always did when my thoughts refused to line up neatly.
The coffee in my mug had gone untouched for a while now, a thin skin forming on the surface, bitter and cold. I didn’t bother pouring it out.
Elena sat on the edge of the couch, her legs were folded beneath her, tablet balanced loosely in her hands. She kept scrolling, pausing, scrolling again. I could tell by the slight tension in her shoulders that she wasn’t really reading.
She was somewhere else—probably with her mother’s letter or with Conrad’s shadow, which had a way of stretching into every room, every moment, no matter how far removed he seemed.
“She didn’t even clean out her desk,” I muttered, stopping short near the window before turning back again. “One time she’s embedded deep in the company, playing loyal assistant, and the next—radio silence.”
My words came out sharper than I meant them to. Frustration had a way of watering down patience.
Elena lifted her head slightly. “She’s definitely hiding something else.”
I stopped pacing.
The way she said it made my stomach tighten.
Elena had learned the hard way. She'd learned how to recognize patterns like this.
“You think your father pulled her out?” I asked.
She didn’t answer right away. Her thoughtful eyes settled on me. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “But I do know this isn’t just her retreating. My father calculates, so I think in Mia's case, it has to do with repositioning.”
“She obviously left because she was compromised,” I said, leaning back against the wall, arms folding across my chest more out of habit than comfort.
Elena’s gaze drifted downward. “Mia was his pawn…” Her fingers tightened slightly around the edge of the tablet. “Now that she's left, I believe my father still has others.”
The silence that followed wasn’t exactly awkward but oppressive.
“Jack,” Elena said quietly.
I looked at her.
“Whatever leverage my father's holding over you…”
My jaw tightened before I could stop it. The muscles there ached, like they’d been bracing for this question long before she asked it. “I don’t know what it is.” I blurted.
“But there is something, right?” she asked.
I hesitated.
That pause cost me more than any lie would have. Then I nodded.
Elena shifted closer, her fingers brushing mine—light, grounding, deliberate. “Then we have to find it and know what it is together before he uses it against you and against us.”
I looked at her before I nodded slightly in agreement.
But neither of us noticed the faint vibration at first—the tracker I’d planted on Mia finally found a signal strong enough to surface.
Mia is on the move.