Page 54 of Dark Soul (Tainted #1)

The server room is cold. Not from malfunction, but by design—a climate-controlled vault three floors beneath Finch Corp’s public image. Down here, silence is standard.

Light is harsh. Everything smells like ozone and fiber-optic heat.

Vera is asleep in the penthouse. Or pretending to be.

And I’m here, chasing ghosts through digital trails that shouldn’t exist.

The leak hasn’t come from an external breach. That much is obvious.

Whoever accessed the surveillance footage of Vera and me has done it manually, on-site, and with cloaked credentials meant to disappear into the rotation of routine.

But routine doesn’t erase fingerprints.

I narrow the command line. Cross-reference metadata tags, strip encryption masks, dig beneath the first layer of falsified logs. There—a deviation.

Folder name: B122_AUDITS_HOPE

Hope.

I almost dismiss it. Another internal department directory. Harmless. Misnamed. Until I open it.

What spills out is not surveillance footage.

It is rot.

Scans of budget reports. Audit trails with broken chains of approval. A document stamped “RECONCILED” but the math doesn’t check out.

I scroll faster.

A redacted complaint form, signed by a junior staffer in ’s charity division.

Buried. Not escalated. Flagged as “irrelevant.”

Then another, a message forwarded from a now-defunct internal email:

“You didn’t hear this from me, but if you keep poking around, you’ll end up like the others. Just leave it.”

No signature. No timestamp. Just dread.

My jaw tightens.

This isn’t about someone leaking clips to humiliate Vera. That was the symptom.

This—this is the disease.

Someone inside my company is laundering reputations through charity walls. Falsifying numbers. Silencing dissent.

And Vera?

She isn’t the target.

She’s just a match tossed too close to gasoline.

I stare at the monitor. Hands still. Mind spiraling.

“What the hell is this?” I whisper.

I don’t move for a full minute. Let it sink in. Let the weight of it press against my sternum like a loaded palm.

Then I download what I can. Encrypt the files. Shut the system down manually.

Not because I don’t trust the machine but because I don’t trust the people who built it.

***

I show up at Finch’s “Hope Division” at 9:12 a.m., unannounced.

The lobby is smaller than the main headquarters. Polished, and clean, but more performative. Motivational posters on the walls. Brochures about community impact. A smiling receptionist who freezes the moment she sees me.

“Mr. Dane…we weren’t expecting—”

“I know.”

I don’t offer more.

Her hand hovers above the phone, unsure whether to alert someone.

“I’d like to speak to your finance officer,” I say.

“Is there…an issue?”

I smile. “Just an internal check-in.”

Within minutes, a small woman in an ill-fitted blazer approaches from the hallway. Her ID badge reads Rosalind E.—Budget Compliance Officer.

She looks like she wants to melt into the floor.

“Mr. Dane,” she says, out of breath. “It’s an honor. Would you like…a tour?”

“Lead the way.”

She walks fast. Too fast.

The halls are almost silent.

Desks unoccupied. Phones unmanned. I count at least eight workstations without owners.

“The team is on outreach today,” she says quickly.

I don’t respond.

The walls are covered in plaques of photos of smiling children, ribbon-cuttings, staged ceremonies. Everything looks rehearsed.

We pass a conference room with a whiteboard that still has notes from six weeks ago. Dust on the tray.

I stop beside a glass wall. On the other side: a long, sterile room with closed file drawers.

“What’s kept in there?” I ask.

“Old grant proposals. Partner contracts. Historical records.”

“May I?”

She hesitates. Then nods. “Of course.”

I step inside. Open the first drawer. Scan the first file.

More redactions. Paper logs labeled as “reconciled externally.” No contact names. No signatures.

“Do you have a copy of your current financial allocations?” I ask.

Rosalind stiffens. “It’s all digital.”

“Print it.”

“I’m not sure I have clearance—”

“You do now.”

She swallows hard. “It’ll just take a second.”

I follow her back to her desk.

While the printer buzzes, she shifts uncomfortably. “Is there something you’re looking for, sir?”

I look at her. “Yes.”

She doesn’t ask what.

When the pages come out, she hands them to me with both hands. I don’t flip through them yet. I tuck them into my jacket pocket.

“You’ve been very helpful.”

She forces a smile. “Thank you.”

I walk out without waiting for a goodbye.

***

As I pass the janitor in the side hallway, he doesn’t look up.

But he mutters just loud enough to be heard.

“He’s one of them.”

I stop.

Turn my head.

“What did you say?”

He doesn’t flinch. Just keeps sweeping.

“I said, you’ll want to burn your shoes when you leave this place.”

He doesn’t smile. Doesn’t wink.

Just pushes his broom past me like I’m not real.

I don’t go straight to my office.

I walk the long way—past the mezzanine conference rooms, the executive gallery, the glass hall lined with abstract art no one ever looks at. My steps are slow. Purposeful.

Every inch of Finch Corp feels unfamiliar now. Not because the walls have changed, but because I have.

The moment I step off the elevator onto the executive floor, I text Jason:

“My office. Now. Close the door.”

By the time I reach it, he’s already waiting.

Jason is tall, older than me by fifteen years, with hands that look like they’d broken more than code. He’d served in private intelligence before security. Loyal. Disciplined. Silent.

He closes the door behind him without a word.

I don’t offer a seat. Don’t sit down.

I pull the folded audit papers from my jacket, unfold them, and lay them flat on the desk like evidence in a trial.

His eyes drop to them and stay there.

I wait.

“How deep does this go?” I ask.

Jason doesn’t answer right away. His jaw shifts.

I watch the small muscle above his left eye twitch, which is something he only does when weighing whether to tell the truth or stay employed.

“You really want to know?” he asks.

I stare at him. “You think I’d be asking if I didn’t?”

He exhales slowly. Sits down without waiting for permission.

“It’s been happening for years. Long before you took majority control. Before your father stepped back. Maybe even before that.”

“What exactly has been happening?”

“Money,” he says. “Donations. Grants. Discretionary funds from international partners. They’re laundered through dummy vendors—shell companies that appear legitimate. But the services are fake. The invoices are rigged. The funds vanish.”

I stay quiet. Let him keep going.

“Every time someone asks questions,” he continues, “they’re flagged. If they push harder, they’re fired. Discredited. Labeled disruptive. I’ve seen HR records doctored overnight. Exit reports rewritten.”

“And if they don’t back down?”

His eyes meet mine. “Some disappear.”

I feel something move beneath my ribs. Not shock—not even rage.

Something colder.

“They knew I’d come looking,” I say.

Jason nods once. “That’s why they baited you with the footage. Vera wasn’t the target. You were. They knew you’d burn half the city if someone came for her. So they made you look down. Made you peel back the wrong layer.”

“You knew.”

Jason’s mouth tightens. “I suspected.”

“You should’ve told me.”

“You weren’t ready.”

I lean forward. “Try that again.”

“You were untouchable, Lucian. Focused on acquisitions. Expansion. Everything aboveboard. Anyone who tried to hand you dirt got shut down by your gatekeepers before it reached your desk. That’s not on me.”

He isn’t wrong.

I had built walls so high, I hadn’t seen the rot inside.

“And now?” I ask.

“Now you’re inside it,” Jason says. “But you don’t have allies in this. Not real ones.”

“Do you know who’s running it?”

Jason’s hesitation is answer enough.

“They’ve erased their trail,” he says. “They move through clean executives. Well-compensated silence. Legal buffers. The charity wing is sacred. Everyone knows: You dig too deep, you get buried.”

My fingers curl around the edge of the desk. “Then we start digging anyway.”

Jason gives a slight nod. “You want a list?”

“Everyone who worked under Hope Division in the last ten years. Employees, vendors, terminated staff. Whistleblowers. Victims.”

“Some of those names might already be gone.”

“Then I want to know who erased them.”

Jason stands. “Understood.”

I don’t thank him. Don’t need to.

He leaves without another word.

And I stand there in the quiet, looking down at a company I thought I controlled.

Turns out, all I’d done was shine the glass.

I hadn’t looked under the floorboards.

***

That night, I don’t sleep.

Vera does.

She’s curled toward my side of the bed, chest rising softly beneath the covers, one hand folded under the pillow. There is a vulnerability to her I haven’t seen before. Not because it wasn’t always there—but because she hadn’t let me see it.

Now she doesn’t have a choice.

I stand at the window, shirt half-buttoned, sleeves rolled, city lights flickering like distant fires.

I don’t light anything. Don’t move.

I just stand there.

And watch.

The city. The sky. The shape of her body under silk sheets.

The one thing I couldn’t let the world break.

I whisper into the silence, not for her to hear, not even for myself.

Just to promise the night.

“You won’t be next, Vera.”

I’ve lived most of my life under the assumption that power makes rot disappear.

That if you throw enough steel, silence, and capital at a threat, it crumbles under your weight. That reputation protects. That control is an antidote.

But I was wrong. Control doesn’t protect; it blinds.

And by the time you realize something is decaying, it’s already under your skin.

Finch Corp isn’t bleeding from the outside. It’s infected from the marrow. And no one saw it because we all kept polishing the surface.

The charity wing, the pristine boardrooms, the smiling interns in pressed navy—none of it has ever been clean. Just well-perfumed.

And Vera?

She wasn’t supposed to matter. Not to them. She was supposed to be a footnote. A convenient crack they could widen until I collapsed.

They don’t know she’s the anchor.

They thought she was the flaw, but she’s the only part of this building that still feels real.

***

I stay away from her that day.

Let her move freely through the penthouse. Let her think I’m at work longer than I am.

I watch from the surveillance console instead, silently, as she reads by the window, then stands in the kitchen, turning a glass of water in her hand for ten minutes without drinking.

I’m not surveilling her to control. Not anymore.

I’m trying to understand what it looks like the version of her that exists when she thinks I’m not watching.

And it terrifies me.

Because I don’t see weakness. I see restraint.

I see a woman folding herself into patience.

And that means she knows something or, worse, suspects.

Still, I don’t stop. I don’t intercept.

If she’s building questions, then I’ll keep burying the answers before they can hurt her.

I’ll keep the war underground.

I’ll handle the bodies, I’ll scrub the floors clean, and I’ll do it all without leaving a stain on her.

***

By nightfall, I’m back at the desk, studying a list Jason delivers on a secure drive.

Former charity employees. Most of the names are meaningless to the rest of the world—receptionists, data analysts, mid-level coordinators. But five have “terminated under review” beside their records.

Two have nothing at all. Just blank lines. No forwarding address. No exit logs.

Ghosts.

I scan their files line by line, committing them to memory.

The further I dig, the colder the trail becomes. Every time I reach for clarity, it disappears behind a firewall of corporate red tape that someone has installed on purpose.

But this isn’t just embezzlement.

It’s human collateral.

People silenced, scrubbed, vanished.

The kind of operation that doesn’t just survive off omission; it thrives because no one had ever cared enough to dig past the first lie.

Until now.

Until Vera.

She’s the only thing in my life that hasn’t been born from strategy. She disrupts protocol. She ruins plans.

She makes me feel human.

And now that makes her the most dangerous variable in the entire system.

Because if they can use her to break me—then she’ll be next.

Not physically. That would be too obvious.

They’ll break her quietly.

Her credibility. Her history. Her name.

They’ll leak something. Twist something. Set traps beneath her until she has nowhere left to stand.

Unless I dismantle it first.

***

I stand at the penthouse window long after the city has gone quiet. Vera is asleep again. This time, not in the guest bed, but in mine.

Curled on her side, one hand half-curved near her collarbone, the other resting where my chest had been hours before.

I haven’t laid beside her. Not tonight.

Not with blood under my fingernails and fire behind my eyes.

I cannot bring that weight into her silence.

She doesn’t know what is unraveling. And I want to keep it that way.

Because once she knows, there’d be no undoing it.

I pull out my phone again. Open the encrypted thread Jason has set up.

I type:

“Trace whistleblower files from the 2018 Hope audit. I want every version—originals, redacted copies, deleted logs.”

Then I hover over send.

My finger never moves.

I delete it instead.

No more trails.

No more evidence that she ever mattered enough to burn the kingdom down for.

I close the screen. Slip the phone back into my pocket.

And whisper to the night, again—this time not as a threat, but as a promise.

“You won’t be next.”

Even if it kills me.