The CEO's Secret Assistant

Chapter Five

The Man in the Car

The recording ended, and neither of us moved. The silence afterward felt heavier than anything my father had actually said.

I kept staring at the recorder on the desk, like another sentence might come out of it if I waited long enough.

He'd been alive three weeks after everyone believed he was gone. He'd come home. I talked to my mother. Known he was being watched. And after four years, I was hearing his voice for the first time since.

The person who betrayed me was the man Damian trusts most.

I swallowed and looked over at him. Whatever composure he usually carried around like armor was gone. He looked confused. Angry. More hurt than he probably wanted me to see.

"Ethan," he said, quiet.

I hated how fast the name settled between us.

"We don't know that." I kept my voice even. "He said the man you trust most. That's Ethan, maybe. Could be someone else."

"Who else do I trust?"

I didn't have an answer for that.

My phone rang before either of us could try to find one. My mother.

I picked up fast. "Mom?"

Her voice came through low. "Amelia, I forgot something."

I straightened. "What?"

"He came back again."

My heart stopped for a second. "Again?"

A hesitation. "Two days before he disappeared for good. Late at night. He looked worse than the first time. He said someone had found out where he was."

I shut my eyes. "Why didn't you tell me."

"He made me promise." Her voice cracked. "He said if you ever went back to Blackwood, don't trust the first person who offers to protect you."

I glanced up. Damian was watching me closely.

"Did he say who we should trust?"

"No. Just that if you ever ended up working for the Blackwoods again protection can be another word for control."

Something in my stomach twisted. Damian caught enough of it to understand what was being said about him, and he didn't argue it.

"Did he leave anything else?" he asked.

A pause on the line. "There was a photograph."

"What photograph?"

"I didn't understand it back then. I think you might now."

She said she'd send it and hung up. Less than a minute later, it landed on my screen, old, a little blurred, taken outside a private legal building. My father was beside a dark car, a black case in his hand.

And several feet away, Ethan Reed.

Damian took the phone out of my hand, eyes narrowing on the image.

"That's Ethan."

"I know."

He zoomed in on the background. "This was taken the night he disappeared."

I looked at him. "Then we need to know why Ethan was there."

We were back at Blackwood before most of the senior staff the next morning. Neither of us had slept much. We went straight to the security archive with Marcus's statement still sitting in the back of my mind.

My father's car arrived at 11:43. Ethan's, seven minutes behind.

"Seven minutes," I said out loud.

"That's what Marcus said." Damian pulled up the report. "And two people entered after Daniel."

"You and Ethan?"

"No." He pointed at the footage. "Watch."

My father went through the side entrance. Ethan, seven minutes later. Then, almost twenty minutes after that, a third car stopped near the building, and someone got out and went in.

Too dark to make out a face. But the way they moved like they already knew exactly where they were headed bothered me more than I could explain.

"How many cars left?" I asked.

He checked the next clip. His jaw went tight.

"One."

"Whose."

"Daniel's."

Neither of us said anything for a second.

"That doesn't add up," I finally said. "If Ethan went in, where did he go?"

"That's what we're finding out." He called Ethan. No answer. Called again. Nothing.

"You don't trust him anymore."

"I don't know what I trust." Quieter than his usual voice.

I looked away, suddenly aware of exactly how close we were standing.

"You know," I said, mostly to break it, "for someone who hired me because he thought I was hiding things, you're doing a lot of hiding yourself."

Something almost like a smile. "You noticed."

"Unfortunately."

"You notice everything."

"Comes with the job."

"Your job is being my assistant."

He took half a step closer. "Somewhere along the way it turned into investigating me too."

I looked up at him. "Maybe you're interesting"

It got out before I could stop it.

His eyes stayed on mine a beat too long. "Maybe I am."

The moment kept stretching until his phone rang, and he stepped back so fast I could've laughed if the timing hadn't been genuinely merciful. I silently thanked whoever was calling.

Ethan.

"Where are you." Too quiet on the other end for me to catch. Damian's face hardened. "Get to my office. Now."

He hung up. "He's coming."

Twenty minutes later Ethan walked in with a thin folder, looking wrecked, something in his face I couldn't quite place.

He set the folder down. "I know what the photograph is."

Damian didn't offer him a chair. "Explain it."

Ethan pulled out several photocopies. "Daniel contacted me that night."

"You never told me that."

"Because I didn't know who to trust." His eyes flicked toward me for a second. "Including you."

I crossed my arms. "Fair enough."

He kept going. "He'd found something in the Northstar accounts. The money wasn't just stolen, it was moved through a chain of companies before landing somewhere nobody could trace." He laid a document down. "He wanted my help finding out who controlled the last account in the chain."

"Why not go to the police?" Damian asked.

"Because he said someone inside Blackwood was watching the investigation itself. If police got involved too early, the evidence would vanish before anyone could touch it."

"And you believed him."

"I did."

He pulled out one more page account numbers, and three sets of initials.

V.B. S.B. E.R.

Victor Blackwood. Sophia Blackwood. Ethan Reed.

My eyes went to the page. "Your name's on it."

"I know."

"Then why should we believe anything you're saying?"

He looked straight at me. "You shouldn't. Not yet."

Damian's expression shifted slightly at that.

"Those initials don't prove who controlled the accounts," Ethan went on. "They prove each of us touched information near them, at different times. Mine's there because I was investigating. Victor's because he approved a transfer tied to one of the shell companies. Sophia's because she signed off on an internal report." He tapped his own initials. "Somebody could've placed the three of us close enough to the trail on purpose. Close enough to make it look like it was us."

I looked at Damian. "So someone wants us tearing each other apart instead of looking at them."

"Exactly," Ethan said.

Every light in the office cut out before Damian could respond.

The room dropped into full dark. I heard a chair scrape somewhere. Damian's hand found my arm in the black.

"Stay here."

"Not going anywhere," I whispered.

The emergency lights kicked on a few seconds later, weak and orange. Ethan was near the door, frozen. Damian turned toward his desk.

The black metal box was gone.

My stomach dropped straight through the floor. "The box."

He was already at the desk. Drawer open. Empty. Everything my father had left behind gone.

"How." Ethan, behind us.

Damian's eyes went to the monitor bank. "Cameras."

We pulled the logs. Every camera on the floor had dropped for exactly ninety seconds. Not two minutes. Not one.

Ninety seconds, precisely whoever did it had known exactly how much time they needed and not a second more.

Something cold settled in my chest.

Then my phone buzzed.

Unknown number. One line, nothing else.

You are looking for the wrong man.