THE PRICE OF HIS NAME

CHAPTER THREE: THE PATTERN

He didn't let me leave immediately. Instead, he spent the next two hours asking me detailed questions about my investigation. Where I'd found the initial irregularities. How long I'd been tracking them. Every detail I could remember. Every connection I'd made. He took notes. He didn't interrupt. He listened the way a prosecutor listens to a witness, evaluating not just the words but the person delivering them.

It was past 6 PM when he finally dismissed me. The office had emptied hours ago. The city outside was transitioning into evening. Adrian walked me to the door.

"Don't access Voss systems again without my permission," he said. "Don't discuss this with anyone. And don't investigate any further."

I should have listened. Instead, I spent my evening researching everything I could find about Voss International's corporate structure.

My apartment was quiet in that way city apartments never really are. Noise filtered up from the street. Pipes clanked in the walls. Neighbours moved around above me. But inside my space, there was only the sound of my laptop keyboard and the occasional siren passing outside.

I made coffee at 9 PM and knew I wouldn't sleep that night.

The company had been founded by Victor Voss and his brother Sebastian. That was public information. What wasn't public was the tension between them that seemed to run through every corporate decision for the first decade of the company's existence.

I found old news articles about corporate restructuring. About management changes. About the period where Sebastian's role seemed to diminish while Victor's expanded. Then, suddenly, references to Sebastian disappeared entirely, and Victor was running everything solo.

Something had happened between them. Something significant enough to fracture a business partnership but not significant enough to make headlines. Something that had been carefully managed, carefully controlled, carefully hidden.

By 1995, Sebastian Voss had effectively been erased from Voss International's public narrative. He was still listed as an officer of the company for tax purposes. But he wasn't mentioned in press releases. He didn't appear in annual reports. He was a ghost haunting his own company.

My eyes burned from staring at the screen. The coffee had gone cold hours ago. My apartment was dark except for the monitor's glow. This was how I investigated things. Alone. Late. With no one to interrupt my focus.

At 11 PM, my phone rang. Adrian's name came up on the screen.

I stared at it for three seconds before answering.

"You've continued investigating," he said without preamble.

"How do you know?"

"Because I had IT track your activity. You accessed seventeen different documents related to Voss corporate history."

"So you're having me monitored."

"Yes."

At least he was honest. "And what did you find?"

"That you're smarter than I initially gave you credit for. You've identified the same corporate pattern that I spent three years trying to understand."

"Which is?"

"That my uncle has spent decades trying to reclaim control of a company he felt was wrongly taken from him. And that someone in my organisation is helping him do it."

The enormity of what he was saying didn't quite land immediately. I was still processing the fact that he'd had me monitored. That he'd known exactly what I was researching before I even knew I'd finished researching it.

When it did land, I understood why I'd been summoned in the first place. Adrian wasn't investigating me. He was recruiting me.

"Why are you telling me this?" I asked.

"Because you've already discovered that something is wrong. Because you have the skills to trace financial patterns that most people miss. And because if I try to investigate this alone, my uncle will know immediately."

"So I'm your spy."

"You're my analyst. There's a difference."

I thought about this. I thought about how quickly my life had shifted from ordinary to complicated in the span of a single day. I thought about the message warning me to stop looking. I thought about my deleted files. I thought about a man standing in an office, looking out at a city, asking me to help him understand something dangerous.

"I need protection," I said.

"Done."

"Real protection. Not just corporate security theatre."

"I'll arrange it personally."

"And I need to know what I'm actually looking for. Not company restructuring. Not vague corporate tension. What am I actually investigating?"

Adrian was quiet for a moment. "A company that should no longer exist. My father created it before he died. It's called Asterion."

The name meant nothing to me. But the way Adrian said it meant everything. It meant fear. It meant secrets. It meant something had been hidden so carefully that discovering it had cost me my career security and possibly my safety.