Chapter 13 - The Meeting
We met in a basement diner on the outskirts of the city.
The air was thick with the smell of grease and burnt coffee.
Three people were sitting in a booth: a former accountant, a disgraced lobbyist, and a man who looked like he’d been living in his car.
"You're the wife," the accountant said, looking at me with curiosity.
"I'm Emma Carter," I corrected.
"Right," he laughed, a hollow sound. "The one who took the empire down."
"I didn't do it alone," I said.
"No," the lobbyist said, staring at his coffee. "Ethan did most of the heavy lifting. But we were the ones who carried the weight."
"Why did you start talking?"
"Because we were disposable," the man in the car said, his eyes burning. "We spent years doing his dirty work, and the second he got scared, he tried to pin the blame on us."
I looked at them.
"What do you have?"
The accountant pulled out a thick envelope.
"Everything," he said.
"Every bribe. Every shell company. Every name."
I opened the envelope.
The list was pages long.
And at the top, a single name I recognized.
"Thomas Reed," I said, a name from my father’s old records.
"He’s the one," the accountant said.
I felt my heart stop.
May you like
"My father’s former partner?"
"He never left," the accountant said. "He just moved to the shadows."
