Chapter 3

On the way home, Lily hugged her arms the entire time, as if trying to shrink her body into the passenger seat.

I didn't press her about the safe right away.

Some questions shouldn't be forced out when someone is at their most panicked.

Especially when I had already noticed that before every word she spoke, she would first judge whether it would disappoint me further.

Grant’s family had spent years teaching people that pain was inconvenient.

I would not let Lily learn the same lesson.

She didn't speak until the car pulled up below our apartment building.

"Vanessa called me into her office yesterday afternoon," she said, staring out the car window without looking at me. "She said there was a seating chart in the safe, and that a client had changed seats at the last minute for tonight, so she wanted me to get it and bring it to the front desk."

"Did she give you the code?"

"No. She opened the safe herself, then took a call and asked me to grab the top white folder for her." Lily paused. "There was a seating chart inside. But when I reached for it, I saw a black ledger underneath, along with several invoices."

"Do you remember what was on the invoices?"

"I didn't see everything clearly. But I’d seen the vendor name before," she finally turned to look at me. "It was Harlow Atelier. Claire had me organize the gown invoices from them before. Those receipts were for six gowns, but the amount on these invoices looked like sixty."

I etched that name into my memory.

"Before you left, did Vanessa touch the safe?"

"She took the black ledger," Lily said. "When she saw me standing there, she asked if I was really interested in numbers. I said I was just waiting for her to finish her call. She smiled and told me Everline is a big company, and there are some things an intern shouldn't worry about understanding."

After she finished, a look of shame crossed her face, as if she felt she shouldn't have been curious in the first place.

I took her hand.

"Seeing something wrong isn't your fault."

"But if I hadn't seen it..."

"They would have found another way," I interrupted her. "The person who put that necklace in your locker had already planned to make you take the fall. What you saw only made them more desperate."

I didn't want to be cruel to her.

But I wanted even less for her to think that if she had just been a little better, a little quieter, she could have avoided everything that happened tonight.

What those people truly punished was never what she had done wrong.

They were punishing her because she had not stayed quiet the way they expected her to.

Once back home, Lily went to shower first.

I sat at the dining table, opened my laptop, and re-read the temporary police restriction notice given to her.

Prohibited from entering Everline headquarters.

Prohibited from contacting any staff on-site that night.

Prohibited from publicly discussing the active theft investigation.

Every line was written neutrally and reasonably, as if to protect everyone.

But in reality, it only stripped Lily of her chance to defend herself.

She couldn't go to Claire, couldn't return to the company to retrieve her work notes, and couldn't even explain to the people who knew her that she hadn't stolen anything.

Meanwhile, Grant and Vanessa were still in that building.

They could hold meetings, align their stories, decide which records were "coincidentally missing," which people "couldn't remember clearly," and which details weren't worth bringing up.

I opened Everline’s internal website, trying to find the security protocols and display registration guidelines for that night.

Just as the page loaded, a new email popped up.

The sender was the company’s HR department.

The phrasing was colder than the police notice.

Given the current circumstances, Lily Bennett’s internship is suspended effective immediately.

The company reserves the right to take further action.

At the very end of the email was another line:

Please do not contact the company's employees, vendors, or clients in a personal capacity.

I stared at those words, my chest tightening bit by bit.

They weren't investigating the truth.

They were isolating Lily first.

The sound of running water in the bathroom stopped.

I closed my laptop immediately and got up to heat some milk in the kitchen.

When Lily came out, I didn't hand her that email. I only told her she needed to get some sleep tonight, and we would talk about everything else tomorrow.

She looked at me, her eyes rimmed red.

"Have they already fired me?"

"A suspension isn't a final decision."

"Will Dad let me go back?"

That question made it impossible for me to answer right away.

I used to think that no matter how cold Grant was toward me, he would at least love our daughter.

Only later did I understand that some people treat love like an accessory: when it doesn't affect their lives or interfere with their interests, they can act very generous; but the moment a price needs to be paid, they will push those closest to them to the front and tell themselves it’s for the greater good.

"I don't know," I said.

Lily lowered her head.

"But I know he has no right to decide whether you’re worth believing."

Late that night, she went back to her room early. But I didn't sleep.

I opened the old trunk tucked away in the back of the storage room.

Inside were things I hadn't wanted to touch after leaving Everline.

I had hidden those old sketches because I thought they belonged to a life that was over.

Now I saw them clearly.

They were proof that I had once existed inside Everline before Grant taught everyone to forget me.

Tucked into the topmost notebook was an old photo.

On the back of the photo was a line written in his own handwriting.

To Nora—the woman who made Everline possible.

I stared at it for a long time before putting the photo back on the table.

He went on to spend fifteen years convincing everyone that Everline was a one-man story.

But that wasn't how it started.

Shortly after one in the morning, my phone lit up.

It was Claire.

I didn't tap it open right away.

The police notice had made it crystal clear that Lily couldn't contact Everline employees.

I wasn't Lily, but I also knew Grant would easily frame any contact as my interfering with the investigation.

The message was just one brief line.

I can’t talk. I’m scared. But check your email.

I opened my inbox.

Sitting inside was an untitled video attachment—the file was small, and the footage was somewhat blurry.

The camera angle was from the far end of the backstage hallway, and the timestamp showed the night before the necklace went missing, close to 11:00 PM.

When the video started, the hallway was empty.

A few seconds later, a woman in a dark coat appeared in the frame.

She wore a hat, walked quickly, and held a black jewelry box in her hand. She stopped in front of the employee locker section and swiped her card to enter.

The camera was too far to make out her face clearly.

But I saw the ring on her right ring finger.

That ring was custom-designed and given to Vanessa by Grant when they got married.

A pear-shaped center diamond, a delicate gold band, with two tiny sapphires set on the side.

Everline had once used it in a promotional video.

I paused the video and enlarged the image.

The image was still not clear enough, nowhere near clear enough to count as proof.

Grant’s lawyers could easily claim it was just a woman wearing a similar ring; Vanessa could also claim the video was edited, or simply accuse me of retaliating against her.

Yet I finally knew that I wasn't blindly stumbling in the dark.

Someone had entered Lily’s locker section.

Someone carrying a jewelry box.

And just as I replayed that video over and over, a second email popped up.

This time, it was from the design school Lily had applied to.

Due to the applicant's involvement in an active police investigation, her original scholarship eligibility will be frozen until further notice.

As I finished reading those few lines, my fingers froze on the screen.

What they were stealing was no longer just a necklace.

They were trying to steal Lily’s chance to leave this city, step out of Grant’s shadow, and live a life of her own.

I looked up at my daughter’s tightly closed door, then down at the old photo on the table.

If they thought destroying a young girl's future would teach two women how to be quiet again—

Then were they ready to face the past that truly belonged to Everline?