Chapter 29: Confronting the Ghost
She couldn't stay in the archives; the walls were closing in, the paper trails leading directly to the same board members who gave weekly speeches on duty. She walked to the academy’s memorial garden, the place where students went to gossip, blissfully oblivious to the names etched into the stone. She found the plaque with her father's name. It was tucked in a corner, barely visible under the thick, overgrown ivy. She began to tear the vines away, her fingers bleeding as she worked, her vision blurred by an infusion of pure, righteous anger.
She wasn't just clearing a plaque; she was exposing a lie that had festered for fifteen years. A shadow fell over her, cold and long. It was the board member whose signature she had seen in the file—the architect of the cover-up. He wasn't smiling anymore; his face was a mask of cold, predatory pragmatism. He looked at the cleared plaque, then at her, and she felt the chilling reality that he had been watching her every move since the ceremony. The garden, usually a place of peace, suddenly felt like a kill zone.
