Chapter 3 - The Scapegoat's Signature
Damian reached for the phone, but I was faster. I grabbed it, committing the text to memory, then snapped a photo of the screen using my own device.
"Give me that!" Damian lunged, but I stepped behind the heavy kitchen island.
"Read it, Damian," I demanded. "'*You go down with me.*' Does that sound like a woman who admires your leadership? Does that sound like a mentor who believes in your potential?"
He stood frozen, his hand still outstretched. The alcohol in his blood seemed to curdle into sheer panic. "She... she’s just panicked. She’s reacting emotionally because you ambushed her."
"She’s an apex predator, Damian, and you are the bait," I snapped.
I didn't sleep that night. While Damian sat on the edge of our guest bed, downing tumblers of bourbon in frantic silence, I locked myself in the home office. I pulled down the dusty plastic storage bins from the top of the closet—the ones marked *L.M. - Legal & Estate*.
Inside were the court transcripts from the Indianapolis warehouse tragedy.
Page by page, I laid out the depositions against Damian’s new employment contract and the Marion County facility blueprints he had left on the desk. My hands shook, but my mind was clearer than it had been in years.
The parallels weren't accidental. They were identical.
In 2017, the company was called Decker Logistics. The primary owner was Maribel’s father, Arthur Decker, but Maribel was operations chief. They leased sub-standard industrial hangars, bypassed fire sprinkler retrofits by filing fraudulent "low-hazard storage" exemptions, and filled the buildings with flammable resins. When the fire started, the workers ran toward Exit B—only to find a heavy-duty chain padlocked across the panic bar because Maribel had cited "inventory shrinkage" from that door.
Now, in 2024, Apex Global was using the same contractor, the same warehouse layout, and the exact same "low-hazard" exemption clause.
And right there, at the bottom of Page 14 of the Marion County site blueprint, was a digital signature: *Damian Vance, Regional Director of Operations.*
Beside it was a liability clause in fine print: *The undersigned officer assumes sole personal fiduciary and regulatory responsibility for the accuracy of facility hazard classifications.*
I zoomed in on the date stamp.
It had been signed two days ago, at 11:42 PM.
I remembered that night vividly. Damian had come home smelling of high-end perfume and gin, laughing that Maribel had bought him a victory drink for closing the Marion lease. He had shoved his laptop in front of him, clicked through five tabs without reading them, and scribbled his electronic signature so he could go to bed.
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He hadn't signed a promotion. He had signed his own arrest warrant.
***