Chapter 5
644 Words
Chapter Five: Questions
Elsie’s POV
Elsie sat with the documents spread across her desk, but she was no longer reading them the same way she had in the beginning.
At first, everything had felt clear. To clear that she got suspicious. Fifty five percent legal acquisition. Signed transfers. Clean documentation.
She had expected a c***k somewhere.
Maybe a mistake or a missing approval. Something she could hold onto.
But the more she read, the more the structure held. And that was what unsettled her. The fact that it was all legal, no loophole. Nothing to sabotage him with.
She leaned back slightly, pressing her fingers against her forehead as if that could ease the pressure building there. The numbers did not change no matter how many times she checked them. The names stayed the same. The breakdown remained intact.
Daniel Reeves.
Victoria Holdings.
Benjamin Carter.
Ethan Pierce.
Harper Investments.
All of them had agreed to sell.
All of them had signed.
All of them had been people her father once worked closely with.
Elsie stood up from the chair and began pacing slowly across the office. She had told herself she was looking for truth, but what she actually wanted was control. A version of events that made sense or at least placed blame somewhere.
She stopped near the window, staring out without really seeing anything. The sky outside had darkened more than she remembered noticing earlier. Clouds gathered in heavy layers above the city, blocking out the last of the evening light.
She exhaled slowly.
There was something she kept circling back to without meaning to. Not the ownership, but the fact that her father had never prepared her for this possibility.
She turned back toward the desk, eyes falling again on the documents.
If this was something normal in business, then why had it felt like a shock?
Why had nothing in her father’s teachings ever hinted at a situation like this?
Her thoughts paused there for a moment longer than they should have.
Elsie frowned slightly, as if trying to push the idea away before it settled too deeply.
No.
Her father had always been thorough.
He had involved her more in the company over time. He had explained decisions, corrected her understanding, guided her through meetings. He would not have hidden something this significant.
He wouldn’t have.
But even as she thought it, the certainty did not feel as solid as it used to.
Her phone sat on the edge of the desk.
Damian Cross.
She did not touch it immediately.
Instead, she stared at it for a while, as if the act of calling would finalize something she was not ready to define.
What would she even ask him?
Why did this happen?
Or worse.
What did you do?
Elsie let out a short breath and looked away.
The problem was not that she lacked questions.
It was that every question she formed seemed to lead her back to the same place.
Him.
And that was what she did not like. The sense that her thoughts were beginning to organize themselves around someone else’s actions. She picked up her phone before she could overthink it further, then stopped again. Her thumb hovering over the call icon longer than usual.
Hesitation and doubt surged in, and a possibilities of different outcomes of that phone call flashed across her mind’s eyes.
Elsie lowered the phone again and stared at the darkening window. Ignoring the angry storm that was brewing in a distance, she quickly picked up the documents, her phone and the little purse she came with, because for the first time since that morning she finally knew exactly where she needed to be if she needed answers.
Outside, the sky had fully shifted into evening.
And somewhere in the city, Damian Cross was waiting without needing to be told why.
- Writer
