Chapter 25 · He Gave the Order

The second video started playing before anyone could breathe.

The restaurant was high-end. White tablecloths. Crystal glasses catching afternoon light through floor-to-ceiling windows. The kind of place where you paid for privacy as much as the food.

My father sat across from Archer.

I stopped breathing.

The timestamp in the corner read two days before the crash. Two days before my parents' car went off that bridge. The audio was crystal clear—Ivy had made sure of that.

"Mr. Su." Archer's voice came through the speakers. Calm. Professional. The same voice he'd used in bed last night when he told me he loved me. "I appreciate you meeting me on such short notice."

My father looked tired in the video. I remembered that week. He'd been working late every night, trying to figure out where the company's cash flow problems were coming from. He didn't know yet that someone was bleeding us dry from the inside.

He didn't know he was having lunch with that someone.

"You said it was urgent." My father's voice. God. I hadn't heard it in so long. Not since the funeral. Not since I watched them lower his casket into the ground next to my mother's.