A knot of unease tightened in Maya’s stomach. Alaric’s fleeting smile, a raw, unguarded moment, had chipped away at her carefully constructed defenses. It wasn't just about Leo anymore. It was about the man himself, a man burdened by an invisible weight.
His family’s tragedy. That phrase echoed, hollow and dark. Alaric rarely spoke of it, but the unspoken grief was a constant shadow in his opulent, solitary world.
Understanding his past felt suddenly urgent. She needed answers, not just for herself, but for the elusive peace she hoped to find for Leo, and perhaps, even for Alaric.
Accessing Alaric’s personal files was out of the question. He guarded them with the ferocity of a dragon. But corporate records, public archives, even whispers in the right circles – those were avenues she could explore.
Her laptop glowed in the dimness of her room. Fingers flew across the keyboard. Veridian Innovations. That was the name Alaric’s father’s company had been involved with, before everything fell apart.
Years ago, a corporate scandal had ripped through the city’s elite. Maya had been too young to grasp the intricacies then, but the headlines had been unavoidable. A promising tech firm, Veridian, had collapsed, taking several key investors down with it.
Alaric’s family business, a smaller, older engineering firm, had been one of the casualties. His father, a respected innovator, had lost everything. The official story was a market crash, a series of bad investments.
She suspected otherwise. Alaric's bitterness, his ruthlessness in business – they weren’t born from simple financial misfortune. There was a deeper wound.
Hours bled into days. Maya delved into old financial reports, archived news articles, and obscure legal documents. Most of the public records were sanitized, vague. The real story was buried beneath layers of corporate jargon and legal settlements.
She leveraged old contacts from her brief stint in journalism, asking carefully phrased questions. Nobody remembered much, or perhaps, nobody wanted to. The city’s power brokers had long since moved on.
Then, a flicker. A name in a forgotten online forum, a disgruntled former employee hinting at foul play. Not just bad investments, but deliberate internal sabotage. Intellectual property theft. A hostile takeover disguised as a legitimate collapse.