CHAPTER 2 — THE SECRET SHE HID BEHIND HER DESK
The man holding the gun in the video was not a stranger.
He was someone Damian Russo trusted.
Someone who had stood beside him.
Someone who had eaten at his table.
Someone who knew exactly where Damian would be standing.
The name appeared on the screen.
MICHAEL VOSS.
Damian’s right-hand financial director.
For three years.
The room went silent.
A dangerous kind of silence.
The kind that came before blood was spilled.
Damian stared at the screen.
“No.”
Garrett looked at him.
“You know him.”
“I said no.”
Damian’s voice was colder this time.
Michael Voss had been with him during his hardest years.
He helped rebuild the organization after the old bosses disappeared.
He handled millions of dollars.
He knew every account.
Every company.
Every secret.
Damian trusted very few people.
Michael was one of them.
Or at least…
he thought he was.
Garrett pressed pause.
The screen froze on Michael standing in a parking garage.
A gun hidden beneath his jacket.
“He was planning to kill you.”
Damian didn’t answer.
His eyes stayed on the screen.
Then something caught his attention.
A shadow.
Behind Michael.
A figure standing near a concrete pillar.
Hazel.
Watching.
Again.
“How long?” Damian asked.
Garrett looked confused.
“What?”
“How long did she know?”
Garrett leaned against the table.
“That’s what we don’t know.”
Damian turned around.
For the first time in years, he looked uncomfortable.
Not afraid.
Damian Russo did not scare easily.
But confused?
That was worse.
“She worked ten feet away from me every day.”
His voice lowered.
“And I never noticed.”
Garrett said nothing.
Because there was nothing to say.
---
Three days earlier.
Hazel Brooks sat alone at a small coffee shop across from the Apex Building.
No laptop.
No phone.
No business papers.
Just a cup of coffee she had forgotten to drink.
The city moved around her.
People laughed.
Cars passed.
Nobody looked twice.
That was exactly how she liked it.
Her phone vibrated.
One message.
UNKNOWN NUMBER.
YOU WERE TOO CLOSE.
Hazel stared at the screen.
Her fingers tightened slightly.
A normal person would have looked scared.
Hazel only looked tired.
She deleted the message.
Then another one appeared.
RUSSO KNOWS.
For the first time…
her expression changed.
Not fear.
Concern.
Because Damian Russo finding out the truth was dangerous.
Not only for her.
For everyone.
---
Hazel had spent three years pretending.
Pretending she was ordinary.
Pretending she was harmless.
Pretending she didn’t notice every camera angle in every room.
Pretending she didn’t see the man reaching for a weapon before anyone else.
It was exhausting.
But she had a reason.
A promise.
One she had made years ago.
---
The memory came back suddenly.
A rainy night.
A younger Hazel.
A different name.
A different life.
She stood outside a hospital room.
A man lay inside.
Broken.
Bleeding.
Barely alive.
“You can't keep doing this.”
The doctor’s voice was quiet.
Hazel looked through the glass.
“I have to.”
“Why?”
She didn’t answer immediately.
Then:
“Because he saved my life first.”
---
Back in the present, Hazel returned to her apartment.
It was small.
Almost empty.
No pictures.
No decorations.
No signs of a normal life.
She placed her keys on the table.
Removed her cardigan.
The missing button was still gone.
She looked at the torn fabric.
A tiny reminder of the day everything changed.
Then she opened a hidden compartment beneath the floor.
Inside was a file.
Old.
Worn.
Filled with documents.
Photos.
Names.
At the top was one photograph.
A younger Damian Russo.
Standing beside a woman.
A woman Hazel knew very well.
Her mother.
Hazel touched the picture.
Quietly.
Carefully.
“I’m sorry.”
The words barely left her mouth.
Then her phone rang.
She froze.
Nobody had this number.
Nobody.
She answered.
“Hello?”
A man’s voice responded.
“You should have left when he fired you.”
Hazel stood completely still.
“Who is this?”
A pause.
Then:
“The person who knows why you became Hazel Brooks.”
Her grip tightened.
The man continued.
“And I know what you did before you came to Chicago.”
Hazel looked toward the window.
The street below suddenly felt too open.
Too exposed.
“What do you want?”
A quiet laugh.
“Not what I want.”
A pause.
“What Damian wants.”
---
The next morning.
Damian Russo walked into his office.
Something felt wrong.
Immediately.
His coffee was missing.
The reports were not arranged perfectly.
The room felt empty.
For three years, Hazel had controlled the chaos around him.
Now her absence was everywhere.
He hated that.
He hated that he noticed.
Garrett entered.
“We found something.”
Damian looked up.
“What?”
Garrett placed a folder on the desk.
Inside were Hazel’s employment records.
Except they weren’t real.
The entire file was fake.
Her education.
Her previous jobs.
Her references.
Everything.
Damian slowly turned the pages.
Then he found something.
A photograph.
Hazel.
Ten years younger.
Standing beside a man Damian recognized instantly.
A man who should have been dead.
Damian’s face changed.
“Where did you get this?”
Garrett hesitated.
“From her old records.”
Damian looked at the photo again.
The woman he fired was not who she claimed to be.
And the man beside her…
was the one person Damian had spent years trying to find.
His dead enemy.
---
Damian stood up.
His chair moved backward sharply.
“Find Hazel Brooks.”
Garrett nodded.
“Alive?”
Damian looked toward the empty desk outside his office.
A long silence.
Then:
“Yes.”
A pause.
“But find out who is trying to kill her first.”
---
Because Damian finally understood something.
Hazel wasn’t the danger.
May you like
She was the reason he was still alive.
And someone was desperate to make sure she stopped protecting him.
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