Chapter 3: What Paige Already Knew
Paige didn't move.
Her hand rested on the reception desk as if she needed it to stay upright.
The color had drained from her face completely — not the pale of surprise, but the pale of someone who had been dreading this exact moment and had just run out of time.
"Elena." Her voice came out flat.
"What are you doing here?"
"I work here, Paige." I walked past her toward the corridor.
"Or did you forget that too?"
She stepped sideways, blocking the path.
Not aggressive.
Desperate.
"You need to stop whatever you're doing," she said quietly.
"You don't understand what you're getting into."
Daniel put his hand lightly on my arm — not to stop me, just to signal he was listening.
"Then explain it to me," I said.
Paige glanced at Daniel.
Then at the three black cases.
Her jaw tightened.
"Not here."
"Then where?"
She pulled out her phone and typed something fast.
A second later my phone buzzed.
A room number.
Fourth floor.
A conference room the executive team used for private calls.
I looked at Daniel.
He gave a small nod.
We followed her.
The room was empty.
Paige closed the door and stood with her back against it, arms crossed.
She looked nothing like the woman who had sat at that breakfast table two hours ago watching me get sl\*pped and folding her arms like it was a performance she'd already seen before.
"How much do you have?" she asked.
"Enough."
"On my father?"
"On all of you."
She closed her eyes briefly.
When she opened them, something had shifted.
"The warehouse incident," she said.
"The one in 2019.
You found Marcus."
"Marcus Teller.
Yes.
He signed a statement."
Paige pressed her lips together.
She turned toward the window.
The Manhattan skyline sat behind her, indifferent.
"I tried to stop it," she said.
"When I found out what they were doing to those cold-chain reports, I told my father it was going to collapse eventually.
He told me I didn't understand business." She laughed — short, humorless.
"Then he gave me a role in the foundation so I'd feel included and stay quiet."
Daniel set one of the cases on the conference table and opened it.
Paige looked at the first document on top of the stack.
Her name appeared in the third line.
She didn't flinch, but her hand came up slowly and touched the edge of the paper.
"I didn't sign this," she said.
"I know," I said.
"Someone signed it for you."
The silence that followed was the loudest thing in the room.
Paige turned back to the window.
Her reflection stared at me from the glass — pale, controlled, calculating something I couldn't yet read.
"Grant doesn't know you have this," she said.
It wasn't a question.
"No."
"My father does."
I went still.
"He called me twenty minutes ago," she said.
"He told me you'd left the house.
He told me to find out what you knew and call him back." She set her phone face-down on the table.
"I haven't called him back."
Daniel and I exchanged a look.
"Paige," I said carefully.
"What exactly did your father tell you to do?"
She didn't answer immediately.
She picked up the document with her forged signature and read it fully, slowly, the way someone reads something they already know is going to change the next ten years of their life.
Then she set it down.
"He told me to offer you money," she said.
"Whatever it took.
He said you were a teacher's daughter from Ohio and everyone has a number."
The room went very quiet.
"What's your answer?" Daniel asked.
Paige looked at him.
May you like
Then at me.
"My answer," she said, "is that I want to know what happens to someone who cooperates."
