My Boss Fired Me in Front of Everyone - Nine Minutes Later, Someone Used My Name to Reroute $28 Million in Cargo

I stared at Sarah’s lifeless body on my kitchen linoleum.

“Why did you kill her?” I screamed at Richard, stepping forward before Julian pulled me back by my collar.

“I didn't kill her, Emily,” Richard coughed, pressing a hand against his own bleeding side. “I found her like this. She wasn't working for my father. She was working for yours.”

Richard tossed the bloody hard drive onto the coffee table. He looked exhausted, broken, and terrified.

“My dad is insane, Emily,” Richard panted. “He didn't just order the hit on Tyler’s truck. He ordered a hit on me. Ten minutes ago, his corporate fixers tried to run me off the road. I came here to get the drive so I could trade it to the FBI for immunity.”

Julian kept his weapon leveled at Richard’s chest. “You expect us to believe you’re playing the victim, Richard? You fired Emily this morning.”

“I fired her to get her out of the building!” Richard yelled, tears welling in his eyes. “My dad told me yesterday that he was going to clean house and replace the digital team with cartel engineers. I knew if Emily stayed in that chair, she’d be executed. I tried to save her life!”

I stared at the man who had tormented me for three years. The man who stole my credit and mocked me. Was it possible he had been acting like a monster to protect me from the real one?

“Sarah got here first,” Richard gasped, sliding down the wall. “She was digging through the floorboards. She found the drive. But then the sniper fired through the window.”

“Sniper?” Julian’s head snapped toward the shattered living room window.

CRACK.

The sound of high-velocity glass shattering was instantly followed by the sickening thud of a bullet tearing through flesh.

Richard’s eyes went wide. A perfectly round, dark hole appeared in the center of his throat. He choked on his own blood, collapsing forward onto the rug, dead before he even realized he had been shot.

“Get down!” Julian roared, tackling me to the floor just as a second bullet obliterated the armchair where Richard had been sitting seconds before.

We crawled on our bellies through the broken glass toward the kitchen island, bullets shredding the drywall above our heads.

“He’s on the roof across the street!” Julian yelled, blindly firing two rounds out the window to provide cover. “Grab the hard drive!”

I scrambled toward the coffee table, my hands slicing open on the broken glass, and snatched the bloody silver hard drive. As I pulled my hand back, my fingers brushed against Sarah’s rigid, dead fingers.

Something was wedged beneath her hand.

I pulled it loose. It was a metal locker key, engraved with a serial number from Chicago’s Union Station.

Wrapped around the key was a tiny, blood-stained note written in my father’s handwriting:

“Emily, if you are reading this, Julian Rossi is not FBI. Run.”

I froze. I looked over at Julian, who was reloading his weapon, his eyes locked on the window.

The man who had just saved my life. The man who had shown me the truth about my father. He was a fraud.

“Got the drive?” Julian yelled over the gunfire. “Let’s move! Through the back fire escape!”

I slipped the key and the note into my pocket, gripping the hard drive tightly against my chest. I had no one to trust. Not my boss. Not my father. And definitely not the man holding the gun next to me.

“Yeah,” I lied, staring at the back of Julian's head. “I have it.”

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