Chapter 3 - A Move Victor Never Made
Victor changed every password before midnight.
He ordered Hale Meridian’s cybersecurity director to freeze historical access logs and instructed him not to mention the request to anyone.
Then Victor sat alone in his office and replayed Raymond Pike’s words.
The deletion authorization came from your executive account.
Victor’s credentials had extraordinary reach inside the company.
They could approve acquisitions.
Transfer funds.
Access legal files.
Remove sensitive personnel records.
Only three people besides Victor had ever possessed emergency administrative authority over his executive account.
His chief counsel.
His late wife Simone.
And his younger brother, Adrian Hale.
Adrian.
Victor stared at the old family photograph on his desk.
The Hale brothers had built the company together after their father died, though every magazine profile simplified the story into Victor the visionary and Adrian the loyal operator.
Victor had never corrected them.
Perhaps he should have.
At 12:17 a.m., a soft knock came from the doorway.
Ethan.
Victor looked up.
His son sat in his wheelchair wearing pajama pants and the same navy hoodie.
“You’re supposed to be asleep.”
“You’re supposed to stop spying on me.”
Victor glanced at the monitors.
“I wasn’t spying.”
“You have twelve cameras.”
“Security.”
“One points at my chessboard.”
Victor could not argue.
Ethan rolled farther inside.
“Why did you fire Maya?”
Victor removed his glasses.
“She wasn’t honest about why she wanted the job.”
“Did she steal something?”
“No.”
“Did she hurt me?”
“No.”
“Did she insult your suit?”
“Ethan.”
“Then why?”
Victor hesitated.
His son noticed immediately.
“There.”
“What?”
“That thing you do.”
“What thing?”
“You become a statue when you’re hiding something.”
Victor almost smiled.
“You’re twelve.”
“You say that whenever I’m right.”
Victor leaned back.
Maya’s words returned.
Maybe everyone has spent two years protecting Ethan from remembering.
Victor hated the idea.
He hated it because some part of him recognized truth inside it.
“Did Maya ask you about your mother?”
Ethan’s expression changed.
“No.”
“The accident?”
“No.”
“Anything about Hale Meridian?”
“No.”
“Did she look through anything?”
“No.”
Ethan paused.
“Why?”
Victor looked away.
Ethan rolled closer.
“This is about Mom.”
Victor’s head turned.
“How do you know?”
“You only look like that when it’s about Mom.”
The room became still.
Victor had imagined dozens of conversations with Ethan about Simone.
He had avoided almost all of them.
Not from indifference.
From terror.
“What do you remember about the accident?” Victor asked.
Ethan went rigid.
Immediately, Victor regretted it.
“You don’t have to—”
“No.”
Ethan’s tone was sharp.
“You asked.”
He stared at the chessboard on Victor’s side table, an antique set that had belonged to Victor’s father.
“It was raining.”
Victor waited.
“Mom was angry.”
“With the driver?”
Ethan frowned.
“No.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“You told investigators you remembered almost nothing.”
“I was ten.”
“You were heavily medicated.”
“I know.”
Victor softened his voice.
“What else?”
Ethan’s fingers rested on his wheel rim.
“Mom kept checking her phone.”
Victor remembered Simone’s shattered phone recovered from the vehicle.
Police had never been able to retrieve all its data.
“She got a message,” Ethan continued.
“What did it say?”
“I couldn’t see.”
“Then?”
“She told Mr. Lewis to take Route 17.”
Victor froze.
The official accident occurred on Route 17.
Investigators believed driver Malcolm Lewis had taken that road as a shortcut because of traffic.
Victor had blamed Lewis for it.
For two years.
“Are you sure your mother told him?”
Ethan gave him a wounded look.
“I know what Mom sounded like.”
Victor swallowed.
“What happened next?”
“She said somebody was following us.”
The room seemed to contract.
Victor gripped the desk.
“Ethan.”
“I told the police.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Yes, I did.”
Victor stared at him.
Ethan’s voice became defensive.
“I told a man here. After I came home from rehab.”
“What man?”
“One of your people.”
“Who?”
“I don’t remember his name.”
“Describe him.”
Ethan looked annoyed.
“I was ten. He wore a suit.”
Half Victor’s world wore suits.
“Was Uncle Adrian there?”
Ethan thought.
“No.”
“Raymond?”
“Maybe.”
Victor felt cold.
“What happened after you told him?”
“He said the crash made memories weird. He said I probably mixed it up with a movie.”
Victor’s jaw tightened.
“Who said that?”
“I told you, I don’t know.”
Victor stood too quickly.
Ethan flinched.
Victor immediately stopped.
“I’m not angry at you.”
“I know.”
The fact that Ethan had flinched anyway hurt more.
Victor moved around the desk and crouched so they were level.
He did not touch Ethan.
“Did anyone else ask you about it?”
Ethan stared at him.
“You didn’t.”
The words landed cleanly.
Victor lowered his eyes.
“No.”
“Everyone kept saying I needed to heal.”
“I thought you did.”
“I did.”
Ethan’s voice softened.
“But healing isn’t the same as forgetting.”
Victor looked at his son.
For two years, he had believed giving Ethan privacy meant avoiding the subject that hurt him most.
Perhaps he had simply abandoned him inside it.
“I’m sorry.”
Ethan blinked.
Victor Hale apologized rarely.
To his son, not enough.
“I should have asked.”
Ethan looked away.
“Would you have believed me?”
“Yes.”
A pause.
Victor corrected himself.
“I want to say yes.”
Ethan looked back.
“That’s more believable.”
Victor almost smiled.
Then Ethan reached into the pocket of his hoodie.
He took out a black chess knight.
Maya’s.
“She forgot this.”
Victor stared.
“Why do you have it?”
“I was going to give it back tomorrow.”
“She’s not coming back.”
Ethan’s expression hardened.
Victor exhaled.
“I may have been premature.”
“So you fired her dramatically and now you’re pretending it was strategy?”
Victor gave him a look.
Ethan smiled faintly.
Victor reached for his phone.
Before he could call Maya, a security notification appeared.
Motion detected: archive storage room.
Victor frowned.
It was 12:31 a.m.
No staff should have been inside the locked family archive.
He opened the live feed.
A hooded figure stood before a cabinet containing Simone’s personal files.
The figure used an access card.
The lock opened.
Victor rose.
Ethan looked at the screen.
“Dad?”
Victor enlarged the image.
For one frame, the intruder turned toward the camera.
Victor recognized the face.
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His younger brother Adrian.
And Adrian was removing Simone’s accident records from the cabinet.
