Chapter 6: The Woman with the Key
Elena answered before she had time to think about it.
"Is this Elena Ashworth?" The voice was younger than she'd expected.
Slightly breathless, as though the call had been made from somewhere public.
"Yes."
"I texted you last night.
I sent you the files."
"I know who you are," Elena said.
"Where are you?"
"Bristol.
I'm — I need to meet you.
Not a call.
In person." A pause.
"I know that sounds strange.
But there are things I can't send over a phone.
Physical things.
Documents Victoria kept in hard copy because she didn't trust digital records."
Elena looked at Mr.
Graves.
He gave a small nod.
"When?" Elena asked.
"Today.
This afternoon if you can.
There's a café near Temple Meads station.
I can be there by three."
Two hours later, Elena sat across from a woman in her early thirties with tired eyes and a canvas bag she kept on her lap throughout the entire conversation.
Rachel Morrow was not what Elena had imagined.
She was not glamorous or calculating.
She looked like someone who had not slept properly in several weeks.
"How long did you work for Victoria?" Elena asked.
"Six years.
I started as her personal assistant.
Then she moved me into property management — handling the Dorset estate, the rental properties, the development applications." Rachel set the bag on the table between them.
"I was good at it.
She paid me well.
For a while."
"And then?"
"And then she stopped paying me.
Said there had been an error in the accounts.
Said it would be corrected.
That was fourteen months ago." Rachel's jaw tightened.
"I have invoices.
I have emails where she promises to pay.
I have nothing in my bank account that corresponds to the last fourteen months of work."
"Why didn't you go to a lawyer?"
"Because she told me that if I did, she would say I had stolen from her.
That she had evidence.
That I had been skimming from the rental accounts." Rachel looked at the table.
"I hadn't.
But she had access to those accounts.
She could have made it look like I had."
Elena was quiet for a moment.
"So she had you."
"She had me," Rachel agreed.
"Until last night, when I saw the news about the injunction on the Ashworth holding company.
And I thought — if someone is finally fighting her, I want to be part of it."
She opened the canvas bag and placed a manila folder on the table.
Elena opened it.
Inside were printed emails — dozens of them — between Victoria and a planning official in the local council.
The emails discussed a development application for the land that had been transferred out of Elena's family's name.
They discussed approval timelines.
They discussed a payment — described in the emails as a "consultancy fee" — made to a private account.
The planning official's name was on every email.
So was Victoria's.
"This is bribery," Elena said.
"Yes," Rachel said.
"I printed these eighteen months ago because I thought one day I might need them.
I didn't know what to do with them.
I still don't.
But you have a solicitor.
I don't."
Elena closed the folder.
"You'll need to make a formal statement.
About your unpaid wages and about how you came to have these documents."
"I know."
"It won't be comfortable."
"Neither is watching someone like Victoria Ashworth walk away from everything she's done." Rachel picked up her coffee.
Her hands were steadier than Elena expected.
"I kept her secrets for six years.
I think that's long enough."
Elena called Mr.
Graves from the car park outside the café.
She read him the planning official's name from the top email.
A silence on his end.
Then: "Elena.
That man sits on the regional development committee.
He has approved seven major planning applications in the last three years."
"All of them Ashworth-linked?"
"I'll need to check.
But if even two of them are—"
"Then this isn't just about my land," Elena said.
"No," Mr.
Graves said.
"It isn't."
She stood in the car park with the folder under her arm and the afternoon light going flat around her.
Her phone buzzed.
A message from Julian.
*My mother wants to meet tonight.
She says she's ready to talk terms.*
May you like
Elena read it twice.
Then she typed back: *Tell her it's too late for terms.*
