Bought by Midnight.

Chapter7

Some secrets aren’t buried, they’re caged. And cages rust slowly, until they snap.

Maxwell slammed the door to his private office.

Phillip, his head of security, waited beside the screen. “We found something.”

Eva lingered in the hall. Maxwell didn’t stop her from entering.

Phillip tapped a file open. A red-stamped document blinked on the screen:

“Classified: VOSS-2020-ShelterProgram.”

Maxwell squinted. “What is this?”

Phillip hesitated. “It’s not a business file. It’s a private archive. Hidden inside Voss Global’s internal charity server. We decrypted it 5 hours ago.”

He opened the PDF.

Eva gasped.

Because staring back at them… was her name.

Eva Hart. Shelter ID: V-172.

Status: Subject of Controlled Surveillance – Pregnancy Classified.

Maxwell’s eyes snapped at her. “What the hell is this?”

Phillip scrolled further.

There were photos. Logs. Medical scans. Financial records of the tiny stipend Eva had once received during her pregnancy. Even coded messages between Aldrich and Selene.

Eva’s knees buckled.

“They had a whole system,” she whispered. A program. For women, they wanted to… erase.”

Maxwell’s voice was low. Deadly. “They paid for your birth. But not out of kindness. They owned it.”

Worse still, the last line of the document made Eva’s stomach drop:

Termination Protocol: Engage if Subject returns to Xavier. File marked for activation upon breach.

Maxwell’s eyes darkened. “Your coming back triggered this.”

“They’re planning something,” Eva breathed. “Something bigger.”

Maxwell stood so fast the chair nearly fell.

“Get me every legal contact we have,” he told Phillip. “If they have a termination plan in place, they’ve broken federal law.”

Eva shook her head. “They don’t care about the law. You know that.”

Maxwell turned to her, jaw tight. “Then I’ll break them with something they do care about—exposure.”

Later that night, Eva tucked Elijah into bed again, her hands trembling.

Maxwell stood in the doorway.

“Are you okay?” he asked softly.

“No,” she whispered.

He stepped inside.

“You should’ve told me. About the contract. The program.”

“I was ashamed,” she said. “I let them buy my silence.” My survival.

Maxwell walked closer. Sat on the edge of the bed.

“I don’t care what they forced you to sign,” he said. You’re not property. And they’re not gods.”

Eva looked at him, broken and afraid. “You think we can win against them?”

He reached over. Took her hand.

“No,” he said. “I know we will.”

But that same night, deep inside Voss Global’s server room, another file was triggered.

A countdown clock began flashing on the screen.

72 hours.

The file was labeled:

“Operation Null: Erase Xavier Heir.”

And somewhere in Zurich… a private plane was being prepared.