DECODING THE STERLING LIES

Chapter Five:The Return

Maya’s POV

Ten years.

That was how long it had been since I last heard my father’s voice.

Ten years since I walked into a prison and was told that Alan Hayes had never existed.

Ten years since I learned that memories weren’t always enough to prove the truth.

So I stopped trying to prove it.

At least, that’s what I told myself.

I adjusted my glasses and stared at the figures on my screen.

The office was unusually quiet for a Monday morning.

Outside the glass windows, New York was already moving.

Cars filled the streets below. People hurried along the sidewalks, barely looking up as they chased their own lives.

I envied them sometimes.

People who could live without questioning everything.

I couldn’t.

My eyes returned to the spreadsheet.

Revenue.

Expenses.

Transfers.

Quarterly reports.

Everything looked normal.

Too normal.

I leaned back in my chair.

There was always something.

A missing figure.

A payment that didn’t belong.

A transaction buried under dozens of legitimate ones.

Companies didn’t usually collapse because of one huge mistake.

They collapsed because someone thought nobody would notice the small ones.

And noticing small things happened to be what I was good at.

I adjusted my glasses again.

Another transfer.

I opened the corresponding document.

Then another.

My eyebrows pulled together.

“No.”

I went back.

Checked the figure.

Checked the date.

Checked the account.

Then I opened the previous quarter.

There it was again.

The same pattern.

A series of payments routed through different accounts before returning to the same source.

I leaned closer to the screen.

“Why would you do that?”

I started following the trail.

One account.

Then another.

Then another.

My fingers moved quickly across the keyboard.

The more I searched, the more obvious it became.

Someone had deliberately divided the transactions.

Not enough to trigger immediate suspicion.

Not enough to appear significant on their own.

But together?

They told a very different story.

I pulled up the company’s internal reports.

The numbers didn’t match.

My heartbeat picked up.

There.

Another inconsistency.

I checked it twice.

Then a third time.

Someone had altered the records.

I sat back.

My mind started racing.

Ten years of doing this had taught me one thing.

People lied.

Numbers didn’t.

Numbers only needed someone patient enough to listen.

I spent another hour tracing everything.

By the time I finished, I had enough evidence to explain exactly where the money had gone.

I saved the final report.

Then I stared at the name on the cover.

Tessa Reeds.

Not Maya Hayes.

Never Maya Hayes.

That name had disappeared ten years ago.

Along with everything else.

My hair was different now.

My clothes were different.

My face looked different enough that even I sometimes had to remind myself who I had been.

My documents said Tessa Reeds.

My professional records said Tessa Reeds.

Everyone I worked with knew me as Tessa.

Everyone except Zara.

And Mum.

They were the only two people who still called me Maya.

I closed my eyes briefly.

Dad.

I still thought about him.

More often than I admitted.

I still remembered his last words.

Forget everything.

I had tried.

For ten years, I had tried.

But forgetting had never meant letting go.

It had only meant learning how to live while carrying the questions.

Why did the prison have no record of him?

Where did he go?

Why had everyone acted as though he had never existed?

And why had he known something was coming?

I opened my eyes.

Enough.

I pushed the questions away.

I had work to finish.

I printed the report and stood.

My heels clicked against the floor as I walked toward my colleague’s desk.

“Done?”

I dropped the file in front of him.

“Done.”

He opened it.

His eyes widened as he skimmed the first few pages.

“You found all this?”

“I found inconsistencies.”

“That’s more than inconsistencies.”

I shrugged.

“You asked me to find problems.”

He looked up.

“You’re terrifying.”

“Thank you.”

“That wasn’t a compliment.”

“I’ll take it as one.”

He laughed.

I turned to leave.

“Tessa.”

I stopped.

He picked up another file.

“There’s something else.”

I looked at him.

“What?”

“You’ve been assigned another project.”

“Already?”

“Apparently.”

He slid the file toward me.

I frowned.

“I thought we were done for today.”

“So did I.”

I picked it up.

“Who’s the client?”

He smiled.

“You’re going to like this one.”

“That sounds suspicious.”

“It isn’t.”

He leaned back in his chair.

“They specifically requested you.”

I paused.

“Me?”

“Personally.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re the best we have.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Flattery isn’t going to make me take it.”

“Good, because the project is already yours.”

I sighed.

“What’s the company?”

He pointed at the file.

“Sterling Industries.”

My eyes dropped to the folder.

For a second, nothing happened.

Then my fingers tightened around it.

Sterling Industries.

The name hit me so hard that the room seemed to tilt.

I stared at the folder as though it had opened a door I had spent ten years keeping locked.

Sterling.

The family I had avoided like a plague.

The family connected to my first love.

Julian Sterling.

My chest tightened.

For one brief, humiliating second, I was no longer standing in a glass office in New York.

I was seventeen again.

I was looking at him across a crowded room, believing every promise he made.

Believing that love could be trusted.

Believing that he could be trusted.

Then came the betrayal.

The silence.

The accusation.

And Julian, standing on the other side of it all, hitting the hammer directly on the nail’s head.

He had sealed my fate with the truth he chose to believe.

Or perhaps with the lie he chose not to question.

I forced myself to breathe.

My colleague was still talking.

“Apparently, there’s been some kind of leak. Financial information, internal documents, maybe client data. They haven’t given us the full details yet.”

I looked down at the file again.

A leak.

Of course.

Sterling Industries had money, influence, and enough secrets to bury an entire city.

A leak could mean anything.

Someone stealing funds.

Someone selling confidential information.

Someone inside the company feeding documents to the outside.

It was exactly the kind of mess I was paid to untangle.

But why had they requested me?

Personally.

The question returned, sharper this time.

I opened the file.

The first page contained the company’s basic information.

The second contained the financial history.

The third contained the assignment details.

I read the final line.

Requested investigator: Tessa Reeds.

My eyes remained fixed on the name.

Then the answer came to me.

They didn’t know.

How could they?

Maya Hayes had disappeared ten years ago.

Tessa Reeds had built an entirely new life.

My name had changed.

My records had changed.

My face had changed.

There was no reason for the Sterlings to connect me to the girl I had once been.

There was no reason for Julian to know that Tessa Reeds was Maya Hayes.

No reason for him to know that the woman walking into his family’s company had once loved him.

No reason for him to know that I had never forgotten what he did.

I closed the file.

Maybe it was nothing.

Maybe it was just another company with messy books.

Another set of numbers waiting for me to tear apart.

Another job.

I could treat it like every other job.

Go in.

Find the leak.

Write the report.

Get out.

Fast.

I would not look for Julian.

I would not ask about him.

I would not let old memories interfere with my work.

And if I had to see him at some point, I would remind myself that he was no longer the boy I loved.

He was the man who had betrayed my trust.

The man who had helped destroy everything.

I turned toward the window.

The city stretched endlessly before me.

Ten years ago, I had lost my father.

Ten years ago, I had lost my name.

Now I was standing in one of the biggest financial firms in New York, holding a file from the family I had spent ten years avoiding.

I looked back at my colleague.

“I’ll take it.”

He smiled.

“I knew you would.”

“Send me everything you have.”

“Starting tonight?”

“Starting now.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“You said you were done for the day.”

“I changed my mind.”

I tucked the file beneath my arm.

This was just a project.

Just another investigation.

Just a leak.

I repeated it until the words almost sounded true.

Then I walked back to my desk and opened the Sterling Industries file again.

I didn’t know it yet.

But that file was about to drag me back into everything I had spent ten years trying to leave behind.

And this time, Julian Sterling would be waiting at the other end of it.