THE CEO's SECRET WIFE IS HIS WORST ENEMY

Rain hammered the city for three straight days, but Evelyn Hart didn't let up either. She sat alone in the records room at Hart Capital's old office, surrounded by decades of her family's business in cardboard boxes stacked like headstones along the walls. The bank had been trying to offload this place for two years. Now, it felt like her father's life had shrunk down to these sad, labeled cartons and the flicker of a dying fluorescent bulb overhead.

Eighteen months since the accident. Eighteen months since Eleanor Hayes dropped in a hospital hallway and never woke up.

Evelyn lifted the lid off another box. The label: Benjamin Hart, Personal Correspondence, 2019.

Dad, she whispered, please tell me you left something.

Her phone vibrated on the table. Chloe, checking in again.

Please tell me you're not still in that building.

Evelyn tapped out a reply with her thumb. Just a few more boxes.

It's 11 p.m. You said that at 8.

Consistency is key. You're impossible. Eat something. I'm not kidding.

A ghost of a smile flashed across Evelyn's face maybe her first that day. She set the phone aside and plunged back into the box. Invoices. Holiday cards. A coffee stained notebook packed with her father's cramped handwriting: grocery lists, golf scores, nothing dramatic. Still, she flipped through each page, hoping for... something. A message. A clue. All she found was evidence of a man who loved his family and forgot milk more than once.

She hugged the notebook to her chest for a second, let herself miss him, then set it down.

The bank's deadline was Friday. After that, everything left here would get shredded. Every answer her father might have left would end up as confetti.

She reached for the last box, a small one buried behind the others, label barely hanging on. Misc. Legal.

Inside: a single manila folder. Thin, unmarked.

She slid it open. Just one sheet of paper. The creamy, heavy kind Hart Capital used for big deals. At the top: the company seal, her family's oak tree, proud and serious inside the double ring. Her father had pressed that seal on every contract that mattered. As a kid, she had watched him do it, tongue between his teeth, intent as if he were performing some kind of ritual.

She ran her finger over the raised edges. It felt real.

Then she read the words, and her heart dropped.

AUTHORISATION OF TRANSFER - CONFIDENTIAL

The undersigned, acting on behalf of Hart Capital Partners, hereby authorises the transfer of the sum of $4,200,000 from the Hart Client Trust Account to an escrow entity designated as Halcyon Ridge Holdings...

Halcyon Ridge. Didn't ring a bell.

Her father never moved client money without telling her. Never. Even when she was fresh out of school, he would walk her through big decisions at the dinner table, scribbling numbers on napkins.

She kept reading. Her own heartbeat crowded her ears.

There, at the bottom the signature. Benjamin R. Hart. She could recognize the swirl of that B, the angled H. Looked perfect. Looked just like him.

But the date-

March 14. Her father died March 11.

She stared at the date, just to be sure. The fluorescent light buzzed. Rain drummed the windows.

Three days. Three days after the accident, someone used her father's seal and signature to move four million dollars of other people's money.

No, she whispered, her voice tiny in the empty room. No way.

Either the document was a flawless fake, or someone had forged it with skill she didn't want to believe possible.

Or maybe her father hadn't died the way everyone had said.

She snapped photos of the paper, the seal, the signature, the date, hands shaking so badly the first few were just blurs. She took a breath, steadying herself.

Her father's crash was chalked up as a simple accident. Wet road, bad curve, a guardrail that failed. The police report ran four pages. She had read it enough to quote it from memory. No one had asked a single question not really. No one wanted to.

The investigator on that file, she realised, had been in a rush. Everyone had been.

She turned the document over. Blank, mostly. Except for one tiny pencil mark in the corner - a faint string of characters.

WG-7714. WG.

She stared at those letters. Could be anything - a file code, someone's initials, or just random marks. But after eighteen months in her father's shadow, she didn't see coincidence anymore. She had learned better. Something creaked out in the hallway.

Evelyn froze.

She knew the building. No one should be here. The security guard had left at ten. She had watched him go, raincoat dripping, barely glancing back.

Another creak. Slower this time. A footstep on old boards.

She stuffed the document back into its folder, folder into her coat. Killed her phone screen. The room slipped into gloom, only that tired fluorescent buzzing above her.

She didn't move. Didn't even breathe.

A shadow blocked the frosted glass across the door - tall, broad shoulders, unmoving.

The handle turned.

The door eased open. Two inches. A voice cut through the hallway's dark, calm, low.

I know you're in there, Miss Hart."

She went cold, every muscle tense.

And I think, the voice said, you just found something that doesn't belong to you