Chapter 42: The Confession

Rain continued to fall, slower now, softer — as if the storm itself was holding its breath.

I stared at Gabriel, unable to move. His words hung in the air like smoke.

She’s not working alone.

“What does that mean?” I whispered. “Gabriel, what do you mean she’s not working alone?”

He looked at me the way someone looks at a wound they caused — equal parts regret and terror.

“Eve,” he said, voice low and rough, “you shouldn’t have come here. You shouldn’t have brought Sebastian.”

Sebastian stepped closer, jaw set. “You’re going to have to start explaining, Grayson. Because right now, it looks like everyone’s been lying — you most of all.”

Gabriel’s eyes flicked to him sharply. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I know enough,” Sebastian shot back. “Emily’s fake pregnancy, Marcus’s disappearance, that crash — everything leads back to you. So go ahead, tell us how deep this goes.”

My heart pounded so hard I could barely breathe. “Gabriel,” I said, voice trembling, “what happened that night?”

For a long time, he didn’t answer.

Then he ran a hand over his face, the sound of rain filling the silence.

“The crash,” he said finally. “It wasn’t supposed to happen.”

My breath caught. “What do you mean by ‘supposed to?”

Gabriel’s gaze lifted, his expression hollow. “After the accident, I didn’t remember anything — not the flight, not the meeting, not even who I was. But a few weeks ago, fragments started surfacing. Not memories, exactly — files. Traces. I found maintenance records, signed off by someone from my own company.”

“Who?” Sebastian asked.

Gabriel’s voice hardened. “Emily.”

My throat went dry. “You’re saying she—”

“She arranged the replacement parts,” Gabriel said. “I didn’t know why she’d have access to that kind of clearance —not until I found the emails.”

He paused, eyes dark with realisation. “She told the engineers to reroute the shipment. Said she was expediting things for me.”

Sebastian frowned. “And you didn’t think that was suspicious?”

“I didn’t know, Sebastian!” Gabriel snapped. “I woke up after the crash with half my mind gone and her telling me I’d been betrayed. That Eve left me. That I was the reason Marcus was dead.”

My knees almost gave out. “Marcus…”

Gabriel’s eyes flickered. “He wasn’t supposed to be on that helicopter. Emily was.”

The words hit me like ice water. “What?”

“She switched places with him the morning of the flight,” Gabriel said. “The logs show it —last-minute personnel change. No explanation. Marcus went instead.”

Sebastian’s voice dropped. “So she knew.”

Gabriel nodded once, slowly. “And after the crash, the report vanished. Every copy. The insurance claim was pushed through by her legal team.”

I could barely find my voice. “And you’re just now telling me this?”

“I only found out last night,” Gabriel said quietly. “But there’s more.”

He hesitated, then looked at me—and the look almost broke me.

“When I was in the hospital,” he said softly, “someone came to me. She told me you’d ordered the final inspection. That the failure was tied to your name.”

I froze. “She told you I caused it.”

He closed his eyes. “I didn’t know what to believe.”

Sebastian swore under his breath. “And you didn’t verify it before accusing her?”

“I couldn’t think,” Gabriel said, his voice breaking. “Everything was noise. And she was the only one there. The only one who said she cared.”

My heart thudded painfully. “So she made you doubt me,” I whispered. “Not because you forgot me… but because she made you question what was real.”

Gabriel didn’t speak — but the look in his eyes said everything.

It wasn’t mistrust I saw there. It was guilt.

“She didn’t just take your memory,” I said, voice cracking. “She replaced it — piece by piece — until you couldn’t tell what belonged to us anymore.”

He closed his eyes. “Eve, I wanted to believe you. I did.”

“But you didn’t,” I said softly. “And that’s exactly what she wanted.”

A long pause.

Then Sebastian stepped forward. “We need to go. Now. If Marcus is alive and she’s hiding him, that flash drive might be the proof.”

I turned to leave — but Gabriel caught my wrist.

“Eve,” he said softly, desperately, “I didn’t want to believe her. I swear.”

I met his eyes, her voice steel. “You didn’t have to. You already did.”

I pulled away.

Lightning tore open the sky as I and Sebastian vanished into the rain, leaving Gabriel alone in the doorway — soaked, haunted, and finally realising what he’d done.

He looked down.

The flash drive was gone.

But in its place, half-soaked in the rain, lay a single photo.

Marcus and Emily. Together.

Smiling.

The rain didn’t stop.

It fell harder — as if the city itself was trying to drown the secrets that refused to stay buried.

Me and Sebastian ran through the alley, our clothes soaked, breath visible in the cold air. The glow from the Riverside building faded behind us, swallowed by the mist. My chest burnt, but my mind was sharper than it had been in months.

Gabriel’s confession had changed everything.

Emily wasn’t just manipulative — she was calculated.

And if Marcus had really been the one meant to die in her place…

I shuddered.

“Slow down!” Sebastian caught my arm, turning me toward him. “Eve, think for a second. If she forged those maintenance records and altered the flight logs, she didn’t do it alone. That means someone inside Grayson Industries is helping her.”

I nodded, my teeth chattering. “That flash drive — it might’ve had the names.”

“Then we’re in trouble,” he muttered, scanning the street. “Because it’s gone.”

We stopped under an awning, water streaming off the edges. My pulse still pounded, but my mind was already racing through possibilities.

“Sebastian,” I said, voice low, “you said Marcus’s phone was never found after the crash.”

“Right.”

“Then maybe that’s where she hid the originals. Not on any company server. Not on her computer. On something no one would think to look for.”

Sebastian’s brow furrowed. “You think she’s still got it?”

I shook my head. “No. I think someone else does.”

Sebastian blinked. “Who?”

My eyes lifted, dark and certain. “Marcus.”

A beat.

Then the realisation hit both of us.

“If he’s alive,” Sebastian said slowly, “then he’s the only one who knows exactly what happened that night.”

I nodded. “Which means Emily has every reason to keep him hidden — or make sure we never find him.”

Sebastian exhaled, rubbing the back of his neck. “Then we find him first.”

Lightning cracked across the skyline, slicing through the fog. For a second, my face was illuminated — fierce, determined, no longer the quiet wife who waited for truth to come to her door.

I was going to hunt it.

\---

Meanwhile, back at Riverside, Gabriel stood alone in the entryway. The photo in his hand was crumpled and waterlogged, Marcus’s smile distorted by the rain. He didn’t know whether to believe what he’d just heard — or to question everything he hadn’t.

He moved toward his office, leaving a trail of wet footprints on the tile.

The flash drive wasn’t there. He checked the desk, the drawer, and the floor.

Gone.

A cold dread slid through him. Not just fear — recognition.

She’d been here.

Emily.

His mind flashed back to the last time she’d been in his office — the scent of her perfume lingering too long, the way she’d looked at the framed photo of me on his desk. The faintest smirk, gone in a blink.

He’d thought it was arrogance then.

Now he knew better.

It had been a warning.

He sank into the chair, running a hand through his hair. The computer screen still glowed with the last open document — a maintenance report dated two days before the crash.

At the bottom, barely visible beneath a digital signature, were three letters:

E.M.D.

Emily Marie Dalton.

He shut the laptop hard enough to rattle the desk. His reflection caught in the glass — hollow, exhausted, guilt-ridden.

He’d let her in. Trusted her lies.

And now, because of that, Eve was walking straight into danger.

He reached for his phone.

It buzzed before he could dial.

A message. Unknown number.

“p

His stomach dropped.

Then another message — a photo.

It was me.

In the alley.

With Sebastian.

And in the background, barely visible through the fog… a second silhouette. Watching us.

\---

“Eve,” Sebastian whispered, stopping me just as we reached the car. “Don’t move.”

My breath hitched. “What is it?”

He tilted his chin subtly toward the side mirror. “We’re being followed.”

My pulse spiked. I turned just enough to catch a shadow — a tall figure standing near the corner, unmoving.

For a second, I thought it might be Gabriel.

Then lightning flared, and the figure stepped forward just enough for the light to catch my face.

Emily.

Her lips curved, slow and venomous.

My breath left my body.

Sebastian reached for the car door. “Get in—”

Too late.

The shadow lunged forward. A blur of motion — something metallic gleamed in the rain.

I barely had time to react before a hand slammed against the glass, the sound like a gunshot.

My scream tore through the storm.

Sebastian yanked me down just as the window shattered.

\---

Back inside his office, Gabriel heard the echo of that scream through the phone.

He didn’t think.

He just ran.