BELGIANA : The Invisible Bridge

CHAPTER 8 : BULONG SA ILALIM NG LABYRINTH

The euphoric high from her call with Lucas Devries did not fade; it crystallized. It hardened in Belgiana’s chest into a new, unyielding substance—the core of a diamond formed under immense pressure. The spark of "The Invisible Bridge" was now a pilot light, burning steady and blue, but she knew a pilot light was not enough to warm a house, much less hold back the encroaching cold of Jessica’s shadow. To build her future, she had to become an archaeologist of her own ruin. She had to map the labyrinth.

This new resolve led her to the most anonymous place she could conceive: the sprawling, chaotic food court of a mid-tier mall. It was a temple of fluorescent light and echoing noise, smelling of fried grease and disinfectant. Here, among harried families and teenagers on dates, they were invisible. She chose a table tucked behind a large plastic fern, its leaves dusty and artificial, a perfect symbol of the corporate world they were both fleeing.

Anya Flores arrived five minutes late, her eyes darting over the crowd like a startled bird’s. She slid into the seat opposite Belgiana, clutching her bag to her chest like a shield. She looked older than her years, the constant tension at Laurent-Lee having etched fine lines around her mouth.

“I can’t stay long,” Anya whispered, though the din around them swallowed her words whole.

“I understand. Thank you for coming, Anya. It means everything.” Belgiana pushed a cup of untouched coffee toward her. A small offering. A gesture of peace.

Anya took it, her hands trembling slightly. “When I heard you left… and then what you’re building… I knew I had to talk to you. What she did to you… it wasn’t the first time. It was just the most brutal.”

“Tell me,” Belgiana said, her voice low and steady, a anchor in Anya’s nervous storm.

“After the gala,” Anya began, leaning in, “it was like a switch flipped in her. Jessica. She became… obsessed. She had me pulling all-nighters, not on financial projections, but on him. Charles Laurent. His personal travel logs from the nineties, any non-profit donations to Philippine cultural groups, even his old personal credit card statements from two decades ago that the company still had archived. It was a forensic audit of his past.”

Belgiana’s blood ran cold. This was more calculated than she had even imagined. Jessica hadn’t just seen an opportunity; she had launched a full-scale investigation. “What was she looking for?”

“Proof. And a weakness. She kept muttering about ‘solidifying the narrative.’ But there’s more.” Anya’s voice dropped even further. “She had me running searches through the company’s privileged legal database. Not for case law, but for a specific statute. A term I’d never heard before.” Anya looked her dead in the eyes. “Orphaned Artefact Claim.”

The words hung in the air between them, cold and heavy with implication.

“What is it?” Belgiana asked, though a part of her already knew.

“I looked it up after I quit,” Anya said. “It’s a legal mechanism. When an object of significant cultural or heritage value has its provenance broken—lost records, missing documents, no clear heir—it can be declared ‘orphaned.’ After a certain legal process, it becomes vulnerable to a new claim from a party who can provide ‘compelling evidence’ of a prior, if unproven, connection. It’s how museums sometimes ‘legitimately’ acquire pieces with shady histories. Jessica wasn’t just stealing your pendant. She was creating a paper trail to legally adopt it.”

The sheer, chilling brilliance of it took Belgiana’s breath away. Jessica wasn’t a common thief; she was a forger of reality. She was systematically erasing Belgiana’s history and rewriting it with the Laurent name as the sole, legitimate author.

“And Justin?” Belgiana forced the question out, the name tasting like ash.

A shadow of pity crossed Anya’s face. “He’s her golden boy, publicly. But it’s a gilded cage, Belgiana. He’s miserable. The word is he applied for a transfer to the Singapore office—a clear attempt to get away from her—and she personally killed it. She owns him. He walks through the office like a ghost, smiling on command. He got his promotion, but he lost… everything else. He’s a c***k in her foundation. A very sad, very fragile one.”

The information settled in Belgiana’s mind, each piece a new coordinate on her map. The legal strategy. Justin’s weakening resolve. Jessica’s paranoia.

Anya stood up abruptly. “I have to go. Please… be careful. She has eyes everywhere.”

“Thank you, Anya. You’ve given me more than you know.”

With a final, nervous nod, Anya disappeared into the crowd, leaving Belgiana alone with the ghosts and the gears turning in her head.

She stayed at the table for a long time, the cold coffee forgotten. She opened her laptop, the screen a portal to her two parallel wars. On one tab was the vibrant, living homepage of The Invisible Bridge, Mateo’s beautiful logo a beacon of hope. On another, she pulled up dense, dry legal texts on Orphaned Artefact Claims.

Creation and destruction. The bridge and the labyrinth.

She couldn’t storm Jessica’s castle. Not yet. But she could quietly poison the moat. She found the contact for a journalist, a woman named Clara Santos who had made a name for herself investigating ethical gray areas in the art world. Belgiana created a new, encrypted email account.

Her message was short, anonymous, and precise: “Look into the acquisition practices of the Laurent Family Art Foundation, specifically their use of ‘Orphaned Artefact’ legal frameworks for Southeast Asian pieces. The paperwork might be clean, but the stories are not.”

She hit send. It was not a declaration of war, but the planting of a single, toxic seed. Let it grow in the darkness.

Closing her laptop, she looked out at the bustling, oblivious food court. She was no longer just an architect building a bridge to the future. She was a miner, patiently digging a tunnel into the past, determined to collapse the entire fraudulent edifice from within.

The whispers in the labyrinth had begun. And she was listening.