Never Seen After

Chapter 3 The Empty Echoes

(Julian's POV)

*E. Sterling.*

It had to be a clerical error, maybe an investor I had forgotten. Evelyn could not have guaranteed a nine-figure loan. I had never seen her read a balance sheet.

My phone rattled across the desk. A headline from a major tech publication filled the screen: *“Cross Group’s 'Unbreachable' C-System: Leaked Documents Reveal Critical Security Flaw.”*

My ulcer cramped so hard that I bent over the desk.

“Evelyn! Get me the crisis file. The red one!”

No one answered.

For three years, the red file had landed on my desk before I asked. A call list had always been clipped to the front. That morning, only my own shout came back from the study.

The next cramp drove me into the study. I pulled open the top drawer where Evelyn kept the only medicine that worked, a custom compound from a specialist in Geneva.

The drawer was empty.

I emptied the other drawers onto the carpet. Pens, receipts, cuff links. No medicine.

“Looking for something, honey?”

Mia came in with two mugs of coffee and set one beside my hand.

“My pills.” I pressed a hand to my stomach. “The amber bottles. They were here.”

“Those ugly brown bottles with no labels?” Mia pointed toward the wastebasket. “I threw them out. The big black binder full of scribbles too. You said we needed a fresh start.”

The binder held journalists’ private numbers, the board members’ schedules, and notes on which wine each investor received at Christmas.

It also listed backdoor numbers, assistants’ names, and the hours when difficult people answered. Evelyn had spent three years building it. I had never copied a page.

“You did what?”

I grabbed my phone and searched my contacts. Dr. Evans. Dr. Miller. Neither name meant enough for me to press call. Evelyn had kept the specialist’s private number.

The cramp tightened while I scrolled. The Geneva prescription had sat beside my breakfast every morning, and I had never read the doctor’s name. I called the hospital’s main line.

“Dr. Alistair Finch’s office is closed for the day,” a sterile, automated voice informed me. “Please call back during business hours.”

I tried the press next. A TechCrunch editor owed me a favor. Mark or Mike. Hundreds of names passed under my thumb, but his was not among them.

His number had been in the binder.

The hospital would not connect me. The editor’s number had gone out with the binder.

I dialed Evelyn’s number, the one I used whenever I was late, needed a file, or wanted a problem handled.

*“The number you have dialed is no longer in service. Please check the number and try again.”*

Disconnected.

She had removed the last number I could still remember.

The doorbell rang. A moment later, my housekeeper brought a visitor into the study.

Arthur Vance.

The heir to the Vance banking fortune stood in the doorway in a bespoke suit. He glanced at the drawers on the carpet, Mia’s coffee, and my hand pressed to my stomach.

His suit probably cost more than my first car. Arthur kept his shoes clear of the papers and waited for me to straighten up.

“Cross, you look awful. Redecorating?”

“What do you want, Vance?”

He stepped around the papers and made no offer to help.

“I came to offer my condolences. I heard about your staffing change.”

His eyes stopped on Mia’s framed photograph.

“You finally got rid of the quiet woman who ran your life.” He looked back at me. “How does it feel to trade her for a woman whose only asset is a lie?”

Before I could ask what he meant, my assistant rushed into the room.

“Sir, Blackwood, Veridian, and Apex are all pulling out. They’re terminating their contracts!”

“On what grounds?”

He held out a legal notice. The page rattled in his hand.

“The core C-System patents, sir. A legal notice just arrived. They’ve been revoked. The filings show they never belonged to Cross Group.”