Chapter 6 - The Harbor Files

Anthony was arrested before sunrise.

He claimed the voice on the 911 recording was fake.

He claimed Elena had been paranoid.

He claimed Vanessa had manipulated everyone.

For a man who called himself innocent, he blamed people quickly.

Claire asked me one question.

“What are the Harbor files?”

I knew the name.

Rossi Harbor Redevelopment was a two-billion-dollar project I had abandoned three years earlier after land costs became suspiciously high.

Anthony had run the finance side.

Vanessa, then our outside counsel, had negotiated several property purchases.

I had trusted both of them.

That sentence was becoming expensive.

Theo recovered an old company archive.

The project contained dozens of payments to shell companies.

Nine million.

Then fourteen.

Then another eleven.

Money disappearing in pieces small enough to hide inside a giant project.

Elena had worked as a forensic accountant before Sofia was born.

Of course she had noticed.

I remembered nights she stayed awake beside me with her laptop.

“You’re missing something,” she had said once.

I thought she meant I was overworking.

She meant the company.

Claire found an email Elena sent to herself three days before the crash.

I HAVE THE LEDGER. V DOESN’T KNOW I COPIED IT. A DOES.

V.

Vanessa.

A.

Anthony.

Sofia sat beside me coloring while adults turned her mother’s disappearance into spreadsheets.

Then she looked up.

“Daddy?”

“Yes, baby?”

“Mommy told me not to tell the bad lady about the blue star.”

Claire and I looked at each other.

“What blue star?”

Sofia pointed to the old wooden music box on the bookshelf.

Elena had given it to her before she disappeared.

A tiny blue star was painted beneath the lid.

I opened it.

The music stopped after three notes.

Theo removed the velvet lining.

Hidden underneath was a microSD card.

Claire smiled for the first time all night.

Then Theo inserted it into an offline computer.

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The first file was a video of Elena.

She looked straight into the camera and said, “If Vincent is watching this, then Anthony already tried to kill me.”