Chapter 3 - The Janitor Had Another Identity
Elena had spent eight months trying to prove Sterling Global was connected to her sister’s death.
Now the CEO was telling her someone had erased Sofia from the company after she died.
For several seconds, Elena could not speak.
The boardroom around her blurred into glass walls, city lights, expensive suits, and the quiet mechanical hum of climate control.
All she could see was Sofia at twenty-nine, laughing in Elena’s kitchen with a wooden spoon in one hand and red sauce on her cheek.
Sofia had always been the fearless one.
Elena had been the careful one.
That difference was why Elena had spent years analyzing danger from secure offices while Sofia had gone looking for it in the real world.
“What did she do here?” Elena asked.
Alexander remained standing.
“Cyber risk.”
“That’s impossible.”
“It was supposed to be temporary. Six months. She was brought in under a confidential internal audit.”
“By who?”
Alexander looked toward Margaret.
“My aunt.”
Margaret’s face hardened.
“I brought in dozens of consultants.”
Daniel muttered, “Not like Sofia.”
Elena turned on him.
“What does that mean?”
Daniel’s jaw tightened.
“Sofia found something she wasn’t supposed to find.”
The security guards shifted uneasily.
Alexander stepped closer.
“What?”
Daniel looked at Elena instead.
“I told her to walk away.”
Elena’s voice dropped.
“And did she?”
Daniel gave a sad smile.
“You knew your sister.”
Yes.
Elena did.
Sofia had once driven six hours through a snowstorm because she believed an elderly client was being scammed by a vendor. She had confronted a landlord twice her size when their mother was overcharged on a lease. She had never learned the comfortable art of looking away.
“No,” Elena whispered. “She didn’t.”
Alexander looked at security.
“Take Daniel to conference room C. He stays inside until I say otherwise.”
Daniel resisted.
“If you separate us, you’re making a mistake.”
“Then start telling the truth.”
“I am.”
“Not enough of it.”
As the guards moved him toward the door, Daniel looked back at Elena.
“Check the blue maintenance locker on forty-two.”
Elena froze.
“What?”
Daniel was pulled farther away.
“Locker seventeen!”
The door closed.
Margaret exhaled sharply.
Alexander turned to her.
“You’re staying too.”
She gave him a disbelieving look.
“I am the chairwoman of this company.”
“You’re also named on twelve unauthorized transfers.”
“My signature authority is used by half the finance department.”
“Then you should want this cleared up.”
Margaret’s eyes flashed.
“You have no idea what you’re doing.”
Alexander stepped closer.
“That is becoming increasingly obvious.”
He turned to Elena.
“Come with me.”
Charles protested again.
“Alexander, you cannot make corporate decisions based on the word of a maintenance employee.”
Elena stopped at the door.
Then she faced him.
“You’re right.”
Charles looked satisfied.
Until she continued.
“So don’t take my word for it. Pull your outbound server logs from the last six months and compare them to the transfer dates. Then search for encrypted packets sent between 1:10 and 1:18 a.m. on the nights Daniel made his foreign calls.”
Charles’s expression changed.
Elena nodded toward his laptop.
“You’ll find them.”
Then she left.
Alexander caught up with her outside the boardroom.
“You knew those times from memory?”
“Yes.”
“You memorized six months of late-night activity?”
“I had to.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police?”
Elena pressed the elevator button.
“Because my sister did.”
The doors opened.
They stepped inside.
Alexander looked at her reflection in the mirrored wall.
“What happened?”
“She called me eight months ago from a hotel near JFK. She said she had evidence of corporate espionage, offshore payments, and something she called the Sterling Archive.”
Alexander frowned.
“I’ve never heard of it.”
“She said she had already contacted law enforcement.”
“And?”
“Two days later, her car went off the Taconic Parkway.”
Alexander’s face went still.
“I remember that accident.”
“You should.”
Elena looked at him.
“Your company’s legal department contacted my family before the state police did.”
That landed hard.
Alexander stared at her.
“I didn’t authorize that.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Because I spent eight months learning everything I could about you.”
The elevator stopped on forty-two.
The doors opened onto a silent executive floor.
Elena stepped out.
Alexander remained inside for half a second.
Then he followed.
“You investigated me.”
“I investigated everyone.”
“That’s why you took the janitor job.”
“Yes.”
“You deliberately got hired into my building.”
“Yes.”
“You lied on your application.”
“I simplified.”
For the first time that day, something almost like disbelief crossed his face.
“You listed your previous occupation as customer support.”
“I supported customers.”
“In eight languages?”
“Sometimes nine.”
Despite everything, Alexander nearly smiled.
It vanished quickly.
They reached the maintenance room.
Rows of gray lockers lined the wall.
Seventeen was painted blue.
Elena’s pulse accelerated.
“I’ve never seen that locker open.”
Alexander tried the handle.
Locked.
Elena crouched and studied the old combination mechanism.
“No electronic access.”
“Can you open it?”
She looked up.
“I analyze languages, Alexander. I’m not a safecracker.”
He removed a heavy flashlight from a supply shelf.
“Good.”
He struck the latch twice.
The cheap metal broke.
Elena stared at him.
“That works too.”
Inside the locker sat one object.
A black laptop wrapped in a clear evidence bag.
Elena stopped breathing.
There was a white sticker on the lid.
Two handwritten initials.
S.V.
Sofia Vance.
Elena reached for it with shaking hands.
Underneath the laptop was a photograph.
She pulled it free.
Four people stood outside a hotel in Prague.
Sofia.
Daniel.
Margaret Sterling.
May you like
And Alexander’s dead father, Jonathan Sterling.
The photograph was dated three years after Jonathan Sterling was supposedly buried.
