Masked Hearts

The Investigation

Emerald did not cry at the funeral.

She'd expected to—had braced herself for it, all morning, sitting in the back of the car Alexis had sent,

dressed in black, staring out the window at the gray morning sky. But when the moment came, standing at the

edge of a small crowd of Daniel's friends and colleagues, listening to a minister say words that felt impossibly

small for the size of the loss they were meant to address, Emerald found that she couldn't cry at all. She felt,

instead, a kind of hollow disbelief—a sense that none of this could possibly be real, that surely, surely, this was

some kind of terrible mistake, and any moment now Daniel would walk around the corner with that easy grin of

his, asking what everyone was so upset about.

He didn't, of course. He didn't walk around any corners, that day or any day after. And slowly, over the

following weeks, the disbelief gave way to something heavier—a grief that settled into Emerald's chest like a

stone, dense and immovable, that she carried with her through every ordinary moment of every ordinary day.

She and Daniel had not been—together, not exactly, not in any way she could have named even to herself.

But in the weeks before his death, something had been growing between them—something neither of them had

acted on, something Emerald had told herself was nothing more than friendship, but that she understood now, in

the terrible clarity of grief, had been quietly becoming something else.

She would never know, now, what it might have become. And the not-knowing was its own kind of grief,

separate from and tangled up with everything else. "I think," she told Alexis, three weeks after the funeral, sitting in his apartment in the evening, both of them

still moving through their lives like ghosts, "I think I need some time. Not—not from you, necessarily. Just—

from everything. I can't think about anything else right now. I can't think about us, not properly, not while I'm

still—" She gestured helplessly, unable to find words for the weight she was carrying. "I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize." Alexis's voice was rough, and Emerald, looking at him, saw something in his face that

she didn't have the emotional capacity, in that moment, to examine too closely—a grief that seemed, somehow,

even heavier than her own, tangled with something else, something that looked almost like guilt. "Take

whatever time you need. I'm not going anywhere."

She nodded, and left, and didn't notice—not then, not for a long time afterward—the way Alexis sat alone

in his apartment for hours after she'd gone, staring at nothing, carrying a secret that was slowly, surely, eating

him alive from the inside.

* * *

Liliana had not expected to feel guilty.

She'd sent the photographs—six of them, over the course of three weeks—with a kind of cold, focused

satisfaction, telling herself that all she was doing was showing Alexis the truth, that whatever happened as a

result was simply the truth being allowed to surface. She hadn't expected anything dramatic to come of it. She'd

imagined, vaguely, a confrontation—Alexis questioning Emerald, doubts creeping in, the relationship souring

under the weight of jealousy and suspicion. She'd imagined, in her darkest moments, that it might end the

relationship entirely, and that somehow, in the aftermath, Alexis might finally turn—exhausted, disillusioned—

toward the one person who'd been steady and constant through all of it.

She had not imagined Daniel Ashford dead.

When the news broke—Daniel's car found in a ravine, the body recovered, the funeral, the grief that swept

through Sterling Tower like a physical thing, settling over every department, every employee, including Alexis

himself, who Liliana saw, in the weeks afterward, age what looked like ten years in the space of a month—

something in Liliana's careful, methodical certainty began, for the first time, to c***k.

It's not connected, she told herself, over and over, in the weeks after the funeral. It's a coincidence. A

terrible, tragic coincidence. The photos had nothing to do with this. Daniel died in a car accident. That's all.

That's all it was.

But the timing nagged at her. The photos had started arriving, she knew, right around the time Daniel and

Emerald's friendship had visibly deepened—and Daniel had died less than a week after the last photo Liliana

had sent, the one showing the long hug outside the restaurant, the one Liliana had specifically chosen because of

how it looked, how easily it could be misread.

And there was something else, too—something Liliana had noticed, in the days immediately before Daniel's

death, that she hadn't thought much of at the time but that nagged at her now with growing, uncomfortable

insistence.

Alexis had left the office, three days before Daniel's car was found, for nearly two hours, with no meeting

on his calendar and no explanation given to anyone—including Liliana, who managed his calendar and who, in

six years, had never once known Alexis to simply disappear for two hours without explanation.

She'd assumed, at the time, that it was personal. A doctor's appointment, perhaps, or something to do with

Emerald. She hadn't thought much of it.

Now, weeks later, sitting alone in her apartment late at night, Liliana found herself thinking about that two-

hour gap, and about the timing of Daniel's disappearance, and about a cold, sick feeling that had been growing

in her chest for weeks—a feeling she didn't want to examine too closely, because examining it meant

confronting the possibility that her jealousy, her careful campaign of anonymous photographs, had been a

contributing factor in something far worse than she had ever, in her worst moments, intended.

I need to know, she thought, staring at the dark window of her apartment. I need to know if this was really

just an accident. Because if it wasn't—if there's even a chance it wasn't—then I need to know what I'm

responsible for. She thought about going to the police. She dismissed the idea almost immediately—what would she even

say? I sent some photos to my boss and then his friend died in a car accident a week later, and now I'm worried

there's a connection, based on nothing but a two-hour gap in his calendar and a bad feeling? It sounded insane

even inside her own head. And if she was wrong—if it really had just been a terrible coincidence—then going to

the police would mean confessing to the photographs, to months of obsessive surveillance, to a campaign of

jealousy that, in retrospect, looked uglier and more pathetic than Liliana had ever let herself acknowledge.

But she couldn't let it go, either. The not-knowing had become its own kind of torment—worse, in some

ways, than the guilt itself, because at least guilt had a shape, a cause, something to grapple with. The not-

knowing was just an endless, gnawing uncertainty that followed her everywhere, into every quiet moment, every

glance at Alexis's haunted, hollow face across the office.

So Liliana did the only thing she could think of that felt like it might give her some kind of answer without

requiring her to explain herself to anyone official.

She hired a private investigator.

* * *

Peter Voss—no relation to the Director of Operations who shared his surname, a detail that had caused

some confusion when Liliana first found his name in an online directory—had spent fifteen years as a detective

with the city police department before retiring, three years ago, to start his own small investigative practice. He

specialized, according to his website, in "discreet inquiries"—background checks, missing persons, the

occasional infidelity case, the kind of work that paid the bills without requiring much in the way of drama.

He was not expecting drama when Liliana walked into his office.

"I need you to look into something," Liliana said, sitting across from his desk, her hands folded carefully in

her lap, her composure—six years of professional polish—holding, just barely, against the weight of what she

was about to say. "A car accident. About six weeks ago. A man named Daniel Ashford."

Peter's eyebrows rose slightly. "The architect? That was a pretty high-profile case. Officially closed, as far

as I know—single-vehicle accident, bad storm, no foul play indicated. What exactly are you looking for?"

"I'm not sure," Liliana admitted. "I just—I have reason to believe it might not have been an accident. I can't

tell you why. I just need you to look into it. Quietly. And I need you to be thorough."

"Ms. Cross." Peter leaned back in his chair, studying her with the kind of careful, professional patience that

had served him well over fifteen years of interviews. "If you have information relevant to a death investigation,

the appropriate thing to do is to take that information to the police. I can't reopen a closed case on a hunch—not

without something concrete to go on."

"I know." Liliana's voice was steady, though something in her expression flickered. "I just need to know if

I'm right before I do anything else. Please. I'll pay whatever your rate is. I just—" She stopped, and for a

moment, the careful composure cracked entirely, revealing something raw and frightened underneath. "I think I

might be responsible for something terrible, Mr. Voss. And I need to know, one way or another, before I can

figure out what to do about it."

Peter was quiet for a long moment, studying her. He'd interviewed a lot of people, over fifteen years—he

had a good sense, by now, for who was telling the truth and who wasn't, and something in Liliana's voice, in the

rawness underneath the careful corporate polish, told him this was real.

"Tell me everything," he said finally. "From the beginning. And don't leave anything out—even the parts

that make you look bad. Especially those."

So Liliana told him. Everything—the six years, the jealousy, the calendar, the boutique, the photographs,

the timing. By the time she finished, nearly an hour later, Peter had filled half a notebook with notes, and his

expression had shifted from professional skepticism to something considerably more serious.

"The two-hour gap," he said, tapping his pen against the notebook. "Three days before Ashford

disappeared. Do you know where Sterling went?" "No. He didn't say, and I didn't ask—it wasn't my business, and at the time, I had no reason to think it

mattered."

"Okay." Peter closed the notebook, his expression thoughtful. "I want to be clear with you, Ms. Cross—this

is a long shot. The official investigation found nothing suspicious, and a two-hour gap in someone's calendar

isn't evidence of anything. But." He paused. "There's something you said that bothers me. You said the body

was difficult to identify—badly burned, identified mainly by a watch and general build, no dental records or

DNA confirmation mentioned in the reports I'm aware of."

"I—yes, I think that's right. I read that in the news coverage."

"That's unusual," Peter said quietly. "In a high-profile case, with a victim of Ashford's prominence, you'd

typically expect more thorough identification procedures—DNA testing, at minimum, even if it takes a few

weeks to come back. The fact that the case was closed so quickly, on the basis of a watch and general build

alone..." He shook his head slowly. "It's not impossible. But it's unusual. And unusual is often where these

things start."

He stood, extending a hand. "I'll start asking questions. Quietly, like you asked. It'll take time—and I want

to be honest with you, Ms. Cross, the most likely outcome here is that I find nothing, because there's nothing to

find, and the official story is exactly what happened. But if there's something here..."

"If there's something here," Liliana said, standing as well, "then I need to know. Whatever it is."

"Then I'll find it," Peter said. "Give me two weeks."

It would take considerably longer than two weeks. But what Peter Voss found, in the end—working slowly,

carefully, interview by interview, document by document, across the following months—would change

everything.

For Alexis. For Emerald. For Daniel, wherever he was.

And for Liliana herself, who had set out hoping to ease her own guilt, and would instead find herself, before

it was over, at the center of the very thing that finally exposed the truth.