Two Little Secrets From My Boss

Chapter 173

Archie’s POV

I can't stop watching the security footage. It's three in the morning and I've been sitting at my desk for five hours, reviewing the same clips on repeat.

Maya in the hallway outside Xander's office. Maya in the archives. Maya accessing file cabinets that contain records from six years ago.

Her movements are careful, deliberate, timed precisely when the family sleeps and security patrols are predictable.

Each time I watch, I hope to see something different. Some explanation that makes sense. Some detail that proves my suspicions wrong.

But the evidence just becomes more damning with each replay.

My professional instincts have taken over completely now, overriding what my heart wants to believe.

Driving me to dig deeper into her background, to find proof that will either exonerate her or confirm what I'm terrified to accept.

I pull up public records, start with the basics.

Employment history checks out. Previous positions at companies that exist, references that answer when called, dates that align with the narrative she's constructed.

Education credentials look solid—university records, transcripts, degree verification. Everything a background check would flag appears legitimate.

Exactly as it should for someone who orchestrated her own hiring. Someone who knew what we'd look for and made sure it was all there, all perfect, all just believable enough.

I dig deeper. Social media presence—minimal but present. A Facebook account with sporadic posts dating back years. LinkedIn profile with connections that seem real. The digital footprint of a real person living a real life.

But something nags at me—the timeline, the six-year gap in her social media activity.

Posts stop abruptly, then resume months later with a different quality. Like someone went back and seeded a history that didn't quite exist.

I search for Lora Morrison next—the sister Maya mentioned, the one she claimed died six years ago from trusting the wrong person.

The obituary appears on the third page of results.

‘Lora Morrison, age 27, passed away suddenly on March 15, 2019. She was preceded in death by her parents, David and Catherine Morrison. She is survived by her sister, Maya Morrison. Services will be private. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Seattle Women's Shelter.’

The details are sparse. No cause of death specified. No mention of how she died or where or under what circumstances. Just the bare facts—a young woman dead, a sister left behind, a family line ending.

Six years.

The anniversary reminder on Maya's phone. LS anniversary - 6 years. Lora and someone else? Lora's death?

The timeline that keeps appearing in every file Maya accesses, every search query she makes, every piece of correspondence from Gerald's operations that she photographs in the middle of the night.

March 15, 2019.

I pull up Gerald's case file, check the dates. Gerald was arrested in August 2019, five months after Lora Morrison died. But the arrest didn't come from a standard law enforcement investigation—it came after Daphne and Xander's investigation exposed his operations.

Financial crimes, fraud, connections to people who got hurt in the process of his schemes. Everything Gerald had built came crashing down because Xander and Daphne methodically dismantled it, piece by piece, until there was nothing left to hide behind.

A lot of people got hurt by this person… For example, people like Lora Morrison.

I pull up Maya's employment records from that period. She was supposedly working in Seattle—a marketing position at a tech startup. Payroll stubs are all there. W-2 forms for tax year 2019.

Direct deposit records showing biweekly payments to an account in her name.

The dates overlap with the obituary but don't definitively prove anything. She could have been working while grieving.

Could have maintained her job while dealing with her sister's death. The two things aren't mutually exclusive.

And Maya Morrison is a common enough name. The sister mentioned in the obituary could be someone else entirely. A different Maya Morrison who lost a different sister named Lora. Coincidence rather than conspiracy.

But my instincts know better.

I remember the way Maya's voice caught when she talked about Lora in my kitchen. The raw grief that leaked through her carefully constructed story.

The way she described her sister's sacrifice—she gave up everything to make sure I had a normal life—with pain that couldn't be faked.

The way she said Lora died from trusting the wrong person. From getting involved with someone who destroyed her.

Someone like Gerald.

I pull up more files, search for any connection between Lora Morrison and Gerald's operations.

Any evidence that they knew each other, worked together, had any kind of relationship that would explain why Maya is here now, six years later, systematically accessing every file related to Gerald's business dealings.

The search comes up empty. No direct connection, no smoking gun.

Just two timelines that run parallel—Lora's death in March 2019, Gerald's arrest five months later—and Maya's insertion into the Hale family exactly when they needed someone, with credentials that are just perfect enough to pass scrutiny.

I stare at the screen. The obituary on one side, Maya's employment records on the other. Between them, the surveillance footage is frozen on Maya's face as she slips into Xander's office at two-thirty in the morning.

The evidence is suggestive, suspicious, pointing toward a truth that would rewrite everything I thought I knew about her.

But it's not conclusive, not definitive.

There's still room for explanation. For the possibility that I'm wrong. That paranoia and past trauma—Vincent's threats, my brother's death, the constant vigilance that comes with protecting a family like the Hales—are making me see threats where none exist.

That the woman I've fallen for is exactly who she claims to be, and I'm destroying something real because I can't stop searching for danger in every shadow.

But what if I'm right? What if Maya has been lying since the day we met? What if every moment between us—the parking garage, the confessions, the nights in my bed where she looked at me like I mattered—has been part of whatever mission she's on?

What if loving her is the biggest mistake I've ever made?

I need to ask her directly. Need to hear her tell me the truth or watch her lie to my face. Need to know whether the woman I'm falling for is exactly who she claims to be, or if she's been playing me from the start.

Need to know if I can trust my heart or if I should have trusted my instincts all along.

I close the laptop. My phone sits beside it, screen dark. Maya's name is in my recent calls, in my text messages, woven through my life in ways I can't untangle without tearing everything apart.

I pick up the phone, open a new message and start typing.

‘We need to talk. Can you meet me…’

I stop, stare at the words. I delete them character by character until the message field is blank again.

This conversation can't happen over text. Can't happen in stolen moments between her shifts or in the few hours we carve out at my apartment.

This conversation requires looking her in the eyes while I ask if everything we have is built on lies.

Requires watching her face when I tell her I know about the files she's been accessing. The late-night searches, the six-year timeline that connects to a dead sister and a criminal investigation and a family she infiltrated under false pretenses.

Requires being prepared for whatever answer she gives—the truth that destroys us, or more lies that destroy me.

I set the phone down without sending anything.

This conversation might destroy everything, might take the last good thing in my life—the woman I've fallen for despite every warning sign, despite every instinct screaming danger, and turn it into wreckage I can't rebuild from.

But I have to have it anyway. Because I'm the Hales' head of security. Because protecting them is my job, my purpose, the one thing I've built my life around after everything else fell apart.

Because Vincent is threatening Maya and I can't protect her if I don't know who she really is.

Because I'm in love with her and I need to know if she's in love with me or if I'm just another piece in whatever game she's playing.

The phone sits silent on my desk, the obituary glows on my laptop screen, the security footage waits to be reviewed again.

And I sit in the dark of my apartment, knowing that tomorrow I'll have to ask the questions I'm terrified to hear answered.

Knowing that whatever Maya says, truth or lies, it's going to destroy one of us.

Maybe both.