CHAPTER FOUR-GHOST IN THE SYSTEM
770 Words
The next morning, I woke with ink on my hands.
Not literal ink—just the echo of dreams scribbled into my nerves, bleeding into my fingers. My sketchpad lay open on the coffee table, half-covered in drawings I didn’t remember making. Sharp lines. Curves that looked like they were mourning something.
It was hers. The design. The one from the torn diary page. Only I’d filled it in.
Something was happening to me here.
Or maybe it had already happened, and I was only just noticing the aftershocks.
I dressed quickly and headed to the studio—needing the order, the structure, the rules. But the moment I arrived, Max intercepted me at the entrance.
“Emergency meeting,” he said grimly.
“What kind?”
“The kind that’s not really a meeting. More like… damage control.”
We walked in silence until we reached the top floor.
The conference room was already full—executives, advisors, a few unfamiliar faces in dark suits who didn’t smile.
And at the head of the table: Ethan.
He didn’t look at me. He didn’t need to.
His presence was enough to silence a room of wolves.
Max leaned in. “You should know—there was a data leak.”
My spine stiffened. “Of the project?”
“No. Of her.”
I blinked. “A.K.?”
Max gave a curt nod.
A man from legal began presenting. “Anonymous tip to a gossip outlet. Unconfirmed photos. Rumors of an intern who went missing after a private commission with Mr. Kade. Nothing provable, but it’s circling fast.”
Intern. Missing. Anonymous.
I felt like I’d swallowed ice.
Ethan raised a hand, cutting the lawyer off mid-sentence. “We’ll bury it.”
The lawyer hesitated. “With all due respect, sir—”
“I said we’ll bury it.” His voice was calm. Dangerous.
The room obeyed.
Afterward, as the others filtered out, I stood rooted in place. Ethan moved past me like I was furniture.
“I want answers,” I hissed under my breath.
He stopped. Turned.
“You were never hired to ask questions.”
I stepped into his space. “You didn’t just recruit me for talent. You brought me in to rewrite her. Wipe her off the board.”
His gaze flickered—just a moment. That was all I needed.
“You’re not just covering something up,” I whispered. “You’re hiding from it.”
He stepped closer, lowering his voice. “Be very careful, Lila. You’re starting to sound like you think you matter.”
Then he walked away.
---
That night, I went back to the sketch.
I stared at the curves, the haunting symmetry. Her lines were delicate—mine, angular. Her design lived in memory. Mine wanted revenge.
So I layered them.
Page after page, I built a version that fused us.
Not hers.
Not mine.
Ours.
A knock at the door startled me.
I checked the peephole.
Max.
I opened it warily. “You ever knock at normal hours?”
“Do you sleep at normal hours?”
Fair point.
He handed me a flash drive.
“What’s this?”
“Everything I could find on her,” he said. “Off the record.”
My fingers tightened around the plastic.
“She worked here?” I asked.
He nodded. “Unofficially. That’s why there’s no HR record.”
“And she died?”
He hesitated. “She vanished.”
“That’s not the same.”
“I know.”
I opened the flash drive on my laptop. Dozens of photos. Renderings. Personal notes. One video clip—no audio. She was sitting at this same table, in this same apartment, sketching. She looked... tense. Trapped.
“I think she knew someone was watching her,” Max said.
“Who?”
He didn’t answer.
I looked up. “You think Ethan hurt her.”
“I think Ethan is capable of anything when he believes someone’s betrayed him.”
My stomach turned.
“Why are you helping me?” I asked.
“Because if you’re smart, you’ll stop digging.”
“I’m not smart.”
He smiled sadly. “That’s what worries me.”
---
At 3:47 AM, the power flickered.
Only for a second—but enough to turn my screen black, enough to make every light in the apartment blink once, like an eye twitch.
Then silence.
Except...
My phone lit up with a text from the same unknown number as before.
> “You’re not the first.
But you can be the last.”
- Writer
