Chapter 121
Chapter 121
Evelyn stared at the dial, her mind drifting toward deeper memories.
Her mother's rental apartment had been at 17 Peace Alley, third floor.
Third floor.
1-7-3.
Evelyn took a deep breath and turned the dial.
One. Seven. Three.
Click.
The lock released.
Evelyn's fingers froze mid-air. That crisp mechanical sound rang out in the quiet office with startling clarity.
Cedric turned from the window.
Evelyn slowly lifted the lid. The metal hinges creaked softly, like the first sigh of someone waking after sleeping for over twenty years.
Inside, the box was lined with old newspaper. The date was from twenty-three years ago—the year Evelyn turned three.
Beneath the newspaper lay several items, neatly arranged.
On top was a stack of envelopes bound with a rubber band. The envelopes had yellowed, but their seals were all tightly glued shut. Evelyn picked them up and examined them. No recipient addresses—only numbers. From 001 to 017. Seventeen letters.
Beneath the envelopes was a small cloth pouch, its opening tied with cotton string. Evelyn untied it and shook out several old-fashioned bank passbooks. The covers bore the name of a city credit union that had long since gone bankrupt.
Under the passbooks lay a black-covered notebook. A5 size, with no writing on the cover. But when she opened to the first page, there was Lily's handwriting.
Evelyn's fingers stopped on that line.
The first line read:
[This is a backup of all financial transaction records from my time working at Ashford Group.]
Evelyn's pupils contracted sharply.
Working at Ashford Group.
Her mother had worked at Ashford Group?
Evelyn had never known this. No one had ever told her that Lily had any direct employment relationship with Ashford Group.
She turned to the second page. The notebook contained rows of numbers—dates, amounts, sources, and destinations. Each entry was written neatly and clearly, in a format almost identical to the financial records Evelyn had seen in Ashford Group's HR system.
This was a ledger.
A secret ledger Lily had kept during her time at Ashford Group.
Evelyn's hands began to tremble. Not from fear—from that uncontrollable tremor rising from somewhere deep inside her body. Like discovering the foundation of a house you'd always believed was solid had soil shifting beneath it.
Cedric walked to her side. He said nothing, just placed one hand on her shoulder. The weight and warmth of his palm pressed down simultaneously, anchoring that weightless, floating sensation back to solid ground.
Evelyn kept reading.
Starting on page seven, the entries changed. No longer simple financial flows, but notes with annotations.
[March 12th. Mrs. Ashford requested that the port equity under the Hawk family name be transferred to Ashford Group as a proxy holder. I drafted the agreement.]
[April 3rd. Agreement signed. Frederick did not appear in person. Signatory was proxy representative Paxton.]
Paxton.
Evelyn's fingers gripped the edge of the notebook.
Paxton. The man whose name had appeared on the cremation sign-off form at the funeral home. The man who'd disappeared three years ago, whose wife still lived in the family housing compound on the city's outskirts.
Her mother and Paxton were on the same thread.
Her mother didn't just know Paxton—her mother had drafted those documents.
After Lily was driven out of the Hawk family, she hadn't vanished into obscurity. She'd used the fake surname "Kendall" and entered Ashford Group.
She had worked at her enemy's company.
Evelyn's fingernails dug into the edge of the notebook cover, pressing a deep groove into the soft leather. Something lodged in her throat that she couldn't swallow. The sensation stretched from her chest all the way to the bridge of her nose—acidic, swollen, burning.
Cedric's hand slid from her shoulder, his whole arm wrapping around her back, pulling her into a half-embrace from the side. He didn't look down at the notebook. His gaze stayed fixed on her face.
"She went in on purpose." Evelyn's voice was hoarse, like it had been scraped with sandpaper. "Alone, no money, no connections—the only way she could get close to the truth was to walk into the enemy's camp."
Cedric's arm tightened around her.
Evelyn kept reading.
Page eleven. The date was from twenty-one years ago.
[Today I accidentally discovered the Hawk family's old files stored in the Ashford family basement. The filing cabinets have been renumbered. Original labels torn off. I photographed them with a film camera for safekeeping.]
Page thirteen.
[Paxton informed me today that Susan is preparing to destroy a batch of 'useless documents.' I managed to intercept copies of three agreements.]
Page fifteen.
[Upton seems suspicious. I submitted my resignation today, citing health reasons.]
Page sixteen.
[Resignation approved. All backups transferred to a safe location.]
The last page contained only one sentence.
[Eve, if you're finding this box someday, it means I'm already gone. Forgive me for not telling you sooner. These things are your weapons and your shield. Use them to protect yourself.]
Evelyn closed the notebook.
She held it in her hands, fingers resting on the cover, feeling its weight. So light. Just the weight of an ordinary notebook. But inside were the things her mother had traded years of undercover work to obtain.
The office was silent for a long time.
Outside the window, the city sprawled beneath the afternoon sun. Traffic flowed like rivers. The sound of voices was so distant it seemed like an echo from another world.
Evelyn placed the notebook back in the box. Then she picked up the numbered stack of envelopes.
"These letters..." Her finger traced the seal of envelope 001.
Cedric spoke. His voice was lower than usual, carrying a kind of restrained tenderness. "Don't rush to open them all. Too much for one day."
Evelyn knew he was trying to spare her.
She put the envelopes back in the box and closed the lid.
"Cedric."
"Yeah."
"My mother worked undercover at Ashford Group for years." Evelyn's hand rested on the metal box, her fingertips' warmth evaporating the condensation into a small blurred mark on the surface. "After she resigned, she took these things and moved to 17 Peace Alley."
She looked up at Cedric.
"Peace Alley. The core parcel of the North City project."
Cedric's expression shifted.
Evelyn said, "She hid the box in that bomb shelter because that piece of land would never be touched. Peace Alley's property rights were too complicated—the government didn't want to deal with it, developers found it too much trouble—"
"Until Parker Group took over the North City project." Cedric finished her thought.
Their eyes met again.
Evelyn's heartbeat grew loud in her own ears.
Someone had known about this box before she did. Someone had been waiting after she took over the North City project—waiting for her to find the entrance to that bomb shelter, waiting for her to open that box.
Yesterday's text message. [Buried beneath that parcel is something worth more than four billion.]