Chapter 10: The Password
The email account was exactly where I had left it.
Three years of dust in digital form — newsletters from shops I no longer visited, receipts from a life that felt like it belonged to someone slightly younger than me.
I scrolled past all of it until I found Daniel's name in the sender column.
The subject line read: *For you.
Just in case.*
The body of the email was four sentences.
*Khloe — if you're reading this because something happened to me, I need you to know it wasn't an accident.
The password is Mom's birthday backwards.
I'm sorry I got into this.
I love you.*
I read it three times.
Then I called Marcus into the room.
He read it standing behind me, one hand on the back of my chair.
I felt him go very still.
"He knew," Marcus said.
"He knew something might happen to him." I kept my voice even.
"He prepared for it."
"What's your mother's birthday?"
"March seventh, 1951." I typed it in reverse.
1591-70-3.
The attachment opened.
It was a spreadsheet.
Forty-one pages.
Account numbers, transfer dates, amounts, company names — a long, careful chain of transactions that moved money from one shell entity to the next and eventually arrived somewhere that was not on any public record.
Daniel had highlighted certain rows in yellow.
At the top of the first page, in a text box, he had written one name.
*Vincent Hale.*
And below it, a second name.
*Alderman Patrick Reese — City Infrastructure Fund.*
Marcus leaned forward.
"That's a city official."
"Yes."
"He was documenting bribery."
"And money laundering.
And whatever else is in those forty-one pages." I looked at the screen.
"Daniel found all of this.
And someone made sure he never got the chance to report it."
I forwarded the account details to Grace without opening the attachment further, exactly as she'd instructed.
Then I sat back.
The room was quiet except for the sound of the city outside and the faint rhythm of the baby shifting inside me.
"He was trying to protect people," I said.
"That's why he took the job.
He needed the money, but he also — he was always like that.
He couldn't see something wrong and walk past it."
"Like his sister," Marcus said.
I looked up at him.
"You found the property document.
You called Eleanor.
You didn't walk away when Isabella told you to." He came around and crouched in front of me, his hands on my knees.
"You kept fighting."
"I was terrified."
"I know." He held my gaze.
"So was he.
And he still prepared that email.
He still left you a way forward." He paused.
"He knew you'd be the one to use it."
My throat tightened.
I pressed my lips together and looked at the ceiling for a moment.
"Grace is going to call her federal contact," I said.
"Yes."
"This is bigger than Isabella now."
"Yes."
"It might take a long time."
"It might." He didn't look away.
"But we have forty-one pages and a timestamp and a d*ad man's testimony.
And we have each other." He put one hand gently on my belly.
"And we have her."
The baby moved under his palm.
One firm, deliberate push — as if she had heard him and wanted to confirm.
I laughed.
It came out unsteady, half-tears, half-something lighter.
"She's going to be stubborn," I said.
"She comes by it honestly," Marcus said.
Grace called back at seven that evening.
"There is already a file," she said.
"Vincent Hale has been under federal investigation for fourteen months.
They've been building the financial case but they were missing the municipal connection." A pause.
"Daniel's spreadsheet is the municipal connection."
I closed my eyes.
"They want to meet with you," Grace said.
"Both of you.
Tomorrow morning."
"We'll be there," Marcus said.
After the call, I sat at the window for a while.
The city below was lit up the way it always was — ordinary, continuous, full of people who had no idea what was happening in this room.
May you like
Somewhere out there, Isabella was waiting for my response to her message.
She was still waiting when I went to bed.
