Sleep didn’t come that night.
I sat at my desk long after midnight, the folder open before me, that single phrase looping in my head like a haunting refrain:
Beneficiary — see attached confidential addendum.
But there was no addendum. No clue. Only that torn edge, clean, deliberate, mocking.
Whoever this beneficiary was, they weren’t just erased from paper. They were erased from history.
By dawn, my eyes burned from reading the same lines over and over, hoping something new would appear in the margins. Nothing did. Just the same silence, the same ghost of a truth that refused to show itself.
Then my phone buzzed.
Daniel.
We need to meet. There’s something you have to see.
I hesitated before replying, a part of me screaming to keep my distance. But another part, the one that couldn
