Page 30 of Dark Soul (Tainted #1)

I haven’t left the apartment in twenty-four hours.

The city moves without me. The sky shifts from gray to rust to a low, concrete blue again, but inside, time doesn’t move. It only collects in the corners, like dust and dread.

The paparazzi have finally pulled away from the curb, but my phone never stops buzzing. Not with calls. With silence.

The kind that shows in unread messages from old colleagues who won’t answer mine. The kind that comes from Beth, whose last text is just a heart.

The kind that roars between headlines that name me and headlines that don’t, both equally damning.

My inbox is a minefield. Legal notices. HR summons. Journalists playing casual with phrases like “off the record” and “we’d love to clarify a few things.” But it’s the message from the campaign’s financial security team that makes my fingers go cold.

Flagged activity detected on Vera Calloway’s PAC-linked account.

Suspicious withdrawal patterns. Ongoing audit initiated.

I don’t touch my coffee. Don’t touch the toast I made hours ago. I only stare at the screen like it might rewrite itself if I wait long enough.

The knock on my door comes at 9:15 a.m. sharp.

Finch Industries’ town car is parked outside. No driver visible through the tinted glass. Just the sleek black vehicle and my name in the subject line of the calendar invite I’d received minutes earlier:

Subject: Internal Legal Review—Calloway

Location: 9th Floor, Board Annex Room

Attendance: Mandatory

The air in Finch’s legal wing feels refrigerated. Not cold but sterile.

Three men in navy suits and one woman with an iPad sit at the long glass table when I enter. They don’t rise. They don’t offer greetings. The woman types something before gesturing toward the seat opposite.

“Miss Calloway,” the eldest of the men begins, folding his hands like a disappointed principal. “This isn’t a disciplinary hearing. Not yet.”

“Then what is it?” I ask. My voice holds. Barely.

“A review. The board has opened a neutral internal investigation regarding recent…reputational events. Until the matter is resolved, we’re suspending your access to client dashboards and campaign files.”

“And my badge?”

The woman taps again.

“Temporarily revoked,” she says, without looking up.

“So I’m still employed,” I clarify. “But I can’t work.”

“It’s about optics,” the man says, as if the word excuses everything. “Until this is resolved, we suggest you refrain from external contact with high-profile clients.”

“Suggest,” I repeat, not bothering to hide the venom in it.

No one blinks.

I lean forward. “I want access to the metadata from those email chains. The server logs. Anything that proves this was a fabrication.”

The woman with the tablet responds, still typing, “IT is compiling a mirror image of the week in question. But access will be determined by Risk the room smells like week-old coffee and stale bread, scents I barely note anymore.

I connect to the encrypted drive as though unlocking a door I didn’t want to be open, and yet need to.

The file list pops up, encrypted, but one folder is unlocked: June 2013. Someone has left it accessible, purposeful. The name appears almost a whisper in my memory.

I click.

Images, documents, scans of files I’d thought I destroyed years ago—many before I even left the group home. In the top row is a photograph of a window. Blankets draped across bars. The cell’s glass is cracked.

I recognize the sparse concrete bunk, my bunk, where I’d spent long sleepless nights. The corner of that gray mattress bears the imprint of my body. The same body I had rebuilt to stand upright in boardrooms and courtrooms.

Another scan: paperwork stamped “Voluntary Placement: Verdette Morgan”—my birth name, full and unmasked.

I haven’t seen it since I destroyed the originals when I made the illegal move to cross states, re-registered as an adult, and reinvented myself completely.

Someone hasn’t just pulled files. They’ve dredged them out of the water and laid them back at my feet.

My heart hammers. I am in a memory graveyard, and they’ve lit the torches.

I sit back, mind racing. Fear presses down on my chest like I’m suffocating, the panic of a child waking in the night who hears something outside the door.

My resolve snaps.

I need answers.

***

June 2013, I walk down the wide hallway in early summer light. Concrete floors, flickering fluorescent lights, the stale scent of institutional bleach bleeding into everything. The corridor smells like fear. Ordered.

A counselor named Marisol passes by. She smells of lozenges. She’d always looked at me with something like guilt or an apology for her inability to save a child who taught herself to disappear.

One of the older girls, Kiki, leans close that afternoon in the rec room, voice half-whispered: “You’re gonna get out of here, Vee. You’re keepin’ secrets.”

I’d stared at my hands in that room, hidden under a table. I’d said nothing. Thought nothing. Refused to feel.

That was the day I resolved never to return, not literally but in spirit. I built myself out of silence and steel.

***

Now, I press save on the June 2013 folder. I create a local copy on my encrypted work laptop, everything tagged and backed up to private drives. No trace of location or breadcrumbs for whoever left the file unlocked.

I shove a bottle of cold water in my tote, lock my apartment, and walk out into the spring afternoon with the map tucked inside.

The group home is off a divided road. Rows of townhouses give way to empty lots overrun by grass and weeds. The building now stands gray and empty, windows boarded up.

The asphalt parking lot cracked in spiderwebs beneath crawling vines. The place creaks in the wind, like a coffin settling.

I touch the peeling paint over the front door and pause. My breath catches in my throat when I notice fresh cigarette ash near the step. Not my brand. The cigarette butt jitters with embers. I flick it into the grass.

One step at a time, I cross the threshold or what remains of it.

Inside, the air hums with memory. I know the hallway blind, despite years away. I remember each scuff on the wall. Each crack in the tile.

My flashlight cuts through the gloom. I make my way to the records office where I said goodbye to myself.

Door unhinged, hanging off its frame.

I raise a gloved hand, press inside.

A filing cabinet, coated in dust, but its drawers are pulled open. A drawer low to the floor which should have been mine is empty.

The handles are worn shiny, except that one. I touch it and feel the dent where I’d dropped old files last time I’d had them.

Light from the window behind me falls across the polished steel.

Someone has been in here recently.

Empty coffee cups, a cigarette stub, footprints in the dust, my footprints, newer.

I snap photos with my phone. I try not to shake. Try to think.

Then I hear it: a small click behind me. The sound of a camera lens retracting behind broken door frames.

I spin. Nothing but dark silence.

My breath rattles in my chest. I feel small and exposed for a second longer than I want.

I remember Beth’s empty heart text. I remember the flagged bank account. I remember the suspension from Finch.

Someone has pulled my past into the public arena.

I swallow. Teeth clenched.

I step out. Take one last photo of my old home, facade gray and vacant but haunted.

The lens flashes and disappears the moment I leave the threshold.

Standing across the street, I wait for movement. No one emerges. Just the wind, just the ash, settling over my soul like a warning.

I tuck my map back inside my coat. I look at files in my tote, the June 2013 folder still glowing in my device.

I realize I’ve entered a battlefield. Alone. Underqualified emotionally, but too far in to retreat.

I take a breath and start walking.

Light arcs off glass walls like silent sentinels when I step into Finch’s 9th-floor legal annex. The hallway smells of rigid coffee and disinfected leather. Each footstep echoes, magnified by the emptiness around me. I don’t flinch. Don’t mind.

The space was silent long before I arrived.

I swipe my secondary badge. Access granted—just enough to enter, not enough to take anything.

The temperature is low, kept cold to mask nervous breath. The legal counsel’s office is smaller than I remember: a whiteboard, a locked drawer, one white leather chair.

The counsel sits behind sleek glass, fingers tapping the online transcript of my files.

I stop at the threshold. He looks up.

“Anything new?” he asks without warmth.

“June 2013 folder,” I say. “I traced it to my laptop from this office. Someone staged it. Staged the return of my old identity.”

The counsel lifts a single brow. Doesn’t say it’s impossible. Doesn’t say otherwise. He doesn’t have to. I say what I need.

“They tracked me to the group home today.”

Eyes flick to the screen. He nods. “Yes. The building had signs of recent entry. Security footage is being reviewed.”

“More than that,” I say. “Whoever it is, they knew where the files were, and what to leave accessible. They knew they’d find me there.”

He leans back. “If this is a personal vendetta, Miss Calloway, it could begin to move beyond internal investigation…you need legal counsel outside this firm.”

I lean forward. “I don’t need them protecting me. I need them helping me fight back.”

He meets my gaze. “Not your role.”

I stand. “My role is not to be railroaded.”

He taps the desk. “Badge still revoked. Client contact still off-limits. Get clearance from…let’s say, Risk & Compliance, and they can request file access.”

“Again? Why?” I shake my head, anger stirring. “Because they’d rather protect whoever’s framing me than keep me working?”

He stays silent. I turn with the glass doors clicking behind me—but leave him with one final thought.

“Being quiet doesn’t protect anyone.”

Outside, the city is gray and waiting. I check my phone. No messages. No replies. I head home, footsteps sharp against pavement.

My apartment couches my second entrance.

It feels more like a command center now: open laptops, layering clippings from news outlets, fiberoptic cables twisting across the floor like vines fed by panic. Sticky notes surround my screens:

FOLLOW ASSET J.

FILE DATE + TIME LOOK FOR METADATA LEAK

I click inside the June 2013 folder again. Metadata shows the original folder creation timestamp—it was left here twelve hours ago, during business hours.

I copy each image to a more secure drive. A photograph: myself at seven, hair too-short, school uniform stained.

Next to it, a scan of my birth certificate: Verdette Morgan, born May 2, 1993, to unknown parents. My first real identity.

My phone rings. Caller ID: ***. I hesitate, then accept.

A woman’s voice, low, calm and familiar comes through: “The past was always meant to be found.”

My grip tightens. “Who is this?”

“You know who I am,” whispers the voice, then disconnects.

My breath shudders. But my voice doesn’t. “Do I?” I murmur.